[Illustration: Spines] [Illustration: Cover] HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA By G. MASPERO, Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen'sCollege, Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College ofFrance Edited by A. H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford Translated by M. L. McCLURE, Member of the Committee of the EgyptExploration Fund CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Volume IX. LONDON THE GROLIER SOCIETY PUBLISHERS [Illustration: 001. Jpg Frontispiece] Howling Dervish [Illustration: Titlepage] [Illustration: 001. Jpg PAGE IMAGE] [Illustration: 002. Jpg PAGE IMAGE] _THE IRANIAN CONQUEST_ _THE IRANIAN RELIGIONS--CYRUS IN LYDIA AND AT BABYLON; CAMBYSES INEGYPT--DARIUS AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE EMPIRE. _ _The constitution of the Median empire borrowed from the ancient peoplesof the Euphrates: its religion only is peculiar to itself--Legendsconcerning Zoroaster, his laws; the Avesta and its history--Elementscontained in it of primitive religion--The supreme god Ahura-mazā andhis Amźsha-spentas: the Yazatas, the Fravashis--Angrō-mainyus and hisagents, the Daīvas, the Pairīkas, their struggle with Ahura-mazdā--Theduties of man here below, funerals, his fate after death---Worship andtemples: fire-altars, sacrifices, the Magi_. _Cyrus and the legends concerning his origin: his revolt againstAstyages and the fall of the Median empire--The early years of the reignof Nabonidus: revolutions in Tyre, the taking of Harrān--The end ofthe reign of Alyattes, Lydian art and its earliest coinage--Croesus, his relations with continental Greece, his conquests, his alliances withBabylon and Egypt--The war between Lydia and Persia: the defeat ofthe Lydians, the taking of Sardes, the death of Croesus and subsequentlegends relating to it--The submission of the cities of the Asiaticlittoral. _ _Cyrus in Bactriana and in the eastern regions of the Iranian table-land--The impression produced on the Chaldęan by his victories; the Jewishexiles, Ezekiel and his dreams of restoration, the new temple, theprophecies against Babylon; general discontent with Nabonidus--Theattach of Cyrus and the battle of Zalzallat, the taking of Babylonand the fall of Nabonidus: the end of the Chaldęan empire and thedeliverance of the Jews. _ _Egypt under Amasis: building works, support given to theGreeks; Naukratis, its temples, its constitution, and itsprosperity--Preparations for defence and the unpopularity of Amasis withthe native Egyptians--The death of Cyrus and legends relating to it: hispalace at Pasargadę and his tomb--Cambyses and Smerdis--The legendarycauses of the war with Egypt--Psammetichus III. , the battle of Pelusium;Egypt reduced to a Persian province. _ _Cambyses' plans for conquest; the abortive expeditions to the oceans ofAmnion and Carthage--The kingdom of Ethiopia, its kings, its customs:the Persians fail to reach Napata, the madness of Cambyses--The fraud ofGaumāta, the death of Cambyses and the reign of the pseudo-Smerdis, the accession of Darius--The revolution in Susiana, Chaldęa, and Media:Nebuchadrezzar III. And the fall of Babylon, the death of Orętes, thedefeat of Khshatrita, restoration of peace throughout Asia, Egyptianaffairs and the re-establishment of the royal power. _ _The organisation of the country and its division into satrapies: thesatrap, the military commander, the royal secretary; couriers, mainroads, the Eyes and Ears of the king--The financial system and theprovincial taxes: the daric--Advantages and drawbacks of the system ofdivision into satrapies; the royal guard and the military organisationof the empire--The conquest of the Hapta-Hindu and the prospect of warwith Greece. _ [Illustration: 003. Jpg PAGE IMAGE] CHAPTER I--THE IRANIAN CONQUEST Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving in Coste and Flandin. The vignette, drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a statuette in terra-cotta, found in Southern Russia, represents a young Scythian. _The Iranian religions--Cyrus in Lydia and at Babylon: Cambyses in Egypt--Darius and the organisation of the empire. _ The Median empire is the least known of all those which held sway for atime over the destinies of a portion of Western Asia. The reason of thisis not to be ascribed to the shortness of its duration: the Chaldęanempire of Nebuchadrezzar lasted for a period quite as brief, and yet themain outlines of its history can be established with some certainty inspite of large blanks and much obscurity. Whereas at Babylon, moreover, original documents abound, enabling us to put together, feature byfeature, the picture of its ancient civilisation and of the chronologyof its kings, we possess no contemporary monuments of Ecbatana tofurnish direct information as to its history. To form any idea ofthe Median kings or their people, we are reduced to haphazard noticesgleaned from the chroniclers of other lands, retailing a few isolatedfacts, anecdotes, legends, and conjectures, and, as these materialsreach us through the medium of the Babylonians or the Greeks of thefifth or sixth century B. C. , the picture which we endeavour to composefrom them is always imperfect or out of perspective. We seeminglycatch glimpses of ostentatious luxury, of a political and militaryorganisation, and a method of government analogous to that whichprevailed at later periods among the Persians, but more imperfect, ruder, and nearer to barbarism--a Persia, in fact, in the rudimentarystage, with its ruling spirit and essential characteristics as yetundeveloped. The machinery of state had doubtless been adopted almostin its entirety from the political organisations which obtained in thekingdoms of Assyria, Elam, and Chaldęa, with which sovereignties thefounders of the Median empire had held in turns relations as vassals, enemies, and allies; but once we penetrate this veneer of Mesopotamiancivilisation and reach the inner life of the people, we find in thereligion they profess--mingled with some borrowed traits--a world ofunfamiliar myths and dogmas of native origin. The main outlines of this religion were already fixed when theMedes rose in rebellion against Assur-bani-pal; and the very name of_Confessor_--Fravartīsh--applied to the chief of that day, proves thatit was the faith of the royal family. It was a religion common to allthe Iranians, the Persians as well as the Medes, and legend honoured asits first lawgiver and expounder an ancient prophet named Zarathustra, known to us as Zoroaster. * Most classical writers relegated Zoroasterto some remote age of antiquity--thus he is variously said to have livedsix thousand years before the death of Plato, ** five thousand before theTrojan war, *** one thousand before Moses, and six hundred before Xerxes'campaign against Athens; while some few only affirmed that he had livedat a comparatively recent period, and made him out a disciple of thephilosopher Pythagoras, who flourished about the middle of the fifthcentury B. C. * The name Zarathustra has been interpreted in a score of different ways. The Greeks sometimes attributed to it the meaning "worshipper of the stars, " probably by reason of the similarity in sound of the termination "-astres" of Zoroaster with the word "astron. " Among modern writers, H. Rawlinson derived it from the Assyrian Zīru-Ishtar, "the seed of Ishtar, " but the etymology now most generally accepted is that of Burnouf, according to which it would signify "the man with gold-coloured camels, " the "possessor of tawny camels. " The ordinary Greek form Zoroaster seems to be derived from some name quite distinct from Zarathustra. ** This was, as Pliny records, the opinion of Eudoxus; not Eudoxus of Cnidus, pupil of Plato, as is usually stated, but a more obscure personage, Eudoxus of Rhodes. *** This was the statement of Hermodorus. According to the most ancient national traditions, he was born in theAryanem-vaźjō, or, in other words, in the region between the Araxes andthe Kur, to the west of the Caspian Sea. Later tradition assertedthat his conception was attended by supernatural circumstances, andthe miracles which accompanied his birth announced the advent of a saintdestined to regenerate the world by the revelation of the True Law. Inthe belief of an Iranian, every man, every living creature now existingor henceforth to exist, not excluding the gods themselves, possesses aFrōhar, or guardian spirit, who is assigned to him at his entrance intothe world, and who is thenceforth devoted entirely to watching overhis material and moral well-being, * About the time appointed for theappearance of the prophet, his Frōhar was, by divine grace, imprisonedin the heart of a Haoma, ** and was absorbed, along with the juice ofthe plant, by the priest Purushāspa, *** during a sacrifice, a ray ofheavenly glory descending at the same time into the bosom of a maiden ofnoble race, named Dughdōva, whom Purushāspa shortly afterwards espoused. * The Fravashi (for _fravarti_, from _fra-var_, "to support, nourish"), or the _frōhar (feruer)_, is, properly speaking, the nurse, the genius who nurtures. Many of the practices relating to the conception and cult of the Fravashis seem to me to go back to the primitive period of the Iranian religions. ** The haoma is an _Asclepias Sarcostema Viminalis_. *** The name signifies "He who has many horses. " Zoroaster was engendered from the mingling of the Frōhar with thecelestial ray. The evil spirit, whose supremacy he threatened, endeavoured to destroy him as soon as he saw the light, and despatchedone of his agents, named Bōuiti, from the country of the far north tooppose him; but the infant prophet immediately pronounced the formulawith which the psalm for the offering of the waters opens: "The will ofthe Lord is the rule of good!" and proceeded to pour libations in honourof the river Darźja, on the banks of which he had been born a momentbefore, reciting at the same time the "profession of faith which putsevil spirits to flight. " Bōuiti fled aghast, but his master set to workupon some fresh device. Zoroaster allowed him, however, no time tocomplete his plans: he rose up, and undismayed by the malicious riddlespropounded to him by his adversary, advanced against him with his handsfull of stones--stones as large as a house--with which the good deitysupplied him. The mere sight of him dispersed the demons, and theyregained the gates of their hell in headlong flight, shrieking out, "Howshall we succeed in destroying him? For he is the weapon which strikesdown evil beings; he is the scourge of evil beings. " His infancyand youth were spent in constant disputation with evil spirits: everassailed, he ever came out victorious, and issued more perfect from eachattack. When he was thirty years old, one of the good spirits, Vōhumanō, appeared to him, and conducted him into the presence of Ahura-mazdā, the Supreme Being. When invited to question the deity, Zoroaster asked, "Which is the best of the creatures which are upon the earth?" Theanswer was, that the man whose heart is pure, he excels among hisfellows. He next desired to know the names and functions of the angels, and the nature and attributes of evil. His instruction ended, he crosseda mountain of flames, and underwent a terrible ordeal of purification, during which his breast was pierced with a sword, and melted lead pouredinto his entrails without his suffering any pain: only after this ordealdid he receive from the hands of Ahura-mazdā the Book of the Law, theAvesta, was then sent back to his native land bearing his preciousburden. At that time, Vīshtāspa, son of Aurvatāspa, was reigning overBactria. For ten years Zoroaster had only one disciple, his cousinMaidhyoi-Māonha, but after that he succeeded in converting, oneafter the other, the two sons of Hvōgva, the grand vizir Jāmāspa, whoafterwards married the prophet's daughter, and Frashaoshtra, whosedaughter Hvōgvi he himself espoused; the queen, Hutaosa, was the nextconvert, and afterwards, through her persuasions, the king Vīshtāspahimself became a disciple. The triumph of the good cause was hastened bythe result of a formal disputation between the prophet and the wise menof the court: for three days they essayed to bewilder him with theircaptious objections and their magic arts, thirty standing on his righthand and thirty on his left, but he baffled their wiles, aided by gracefrom above, and having forced them to avow themselves at the end oftheir resources, he completed his victory by reciting the Avesta beforethem. The legend adds, that after rallying the majority of the peopleround him, he lived to a good old age, honoured of all men for hissaintly life. According to some accounts, he was stricken dead bylightning, * while others say he was killed by a Turanian soldier, Brātrōk-rźsh, in a war against the Hyaonas. * This is, under very diverse forms, the version preferred by Western historians of the post-classical period. The question has often been asked whether Zoroaster belongs tothe domain of legend or of history. The only certain thing we knowconcerning him is his name; all the rest is mythical, poetic, orreligious fiction. Classical writers attributed to him the compositionor editing of all the writings comprised in Persian literature: thewhole consisted, they said, of two hundred thousand verses which hadbeen expounded and analysed by Hermippus in his commentaries on thesecret doctrines of the Magi. The Iranians themselves averred that hehad given the world twenty-one volumes--the twenty-one _Nasks_ of theAvesta, * which the Supreme Deity had created from the twenty-one wordsof the Magian profession of faith, the _Ahuna Vairya_. King Vīshtāspa issaid to have caused two authentic copies of the Avesta--which containedin all ten or twelve hundred chapters**--to be made, one of whichwas consigned to the archives of the empire, the other laid up inthe treasury of a fortress, either Shapīgān, Shīzīgān, Samarcand, orPersepolis. *** * The word _Avesta_, in Pehlevi _Apastāk_, whence come the Persian forms _āvasta, ōstā_, is derived from the Achęmenian word _Abasta_, which signifies _law_ in the inscriptions of Darius. The term Zend-Avesta, commonly used to designate the sacred book of the Persians, is incorrectly derived from the expression _Apastāc u Zend_, which in Pehlevi designates first the law itself, and then the translation and commentary in more modern language which conduces to a _knowledge (Zend)_ of the law. The customary application, therefore, of the name Zend to the language of the Avesta is incorrect. ** The Dinkart fixes the number of chapters at 1000, and the Shāh-Nāmak at 1200, written on plates of gold. According to Masudi, the book itself and the two commentaries formed 12, 000 volumes, written in letters of gold, the twenty-one Nasks each contained 200 pages, and the whole of these writings had been inscribed on 12, 000 cow-hides. *** The site of Shapīgān or Shaspīgān is unknown. J. Darmesteter suggests that it ought to be read as _Shizīgān_, which would permit of the identification of the place with Shīz, one of the ancient religious centres of Iran, whose temple was visited by the Sassanids on their accession to the throne. According to the Ardā-Vīrāf the law was preserved at Istakhr, or Persepolis, according to the Shāh- Nāmak at Samarcand in the temple of the Fire-god. Alexander is said to have burnt the former copy: the latter, stolen bythe Greeks, is reported to have been translated into their language andto have furnished them with all their scientific knowledge. One of theArsacids, Vologesus I. , caused a search to be made for all the fragmentswhich existed either in writing or in the memory of the faithful, * andthis collection, added to in the reign of the Sassanid king, ArdashīrBābagan, by the high priest Tansar, and fixed in its present form underSapor I. , was recognised as the religious code of the empire in the timeof Sapor II. , about the fourth century of the Christian era. *** The textis composed, as may be seen, of three distinct strata, which are by nomeans equally ancient;*** one can, nevertheless, make out from it withsufficient certainty the principal features of the religion and cult ofIran, such as they were under the Achęmenids, and perhaps even under thehegemony of the Medes. * Tradition speaks simply of a King Valkash, without specifying which of the four kings named Vologesus is intended. James Darmesteter has given good reasons for believing that this Valkash is Vologesus I. (50-75 A. D. ), the contemporary of Nero. ** This is the tradition reproduced in two versions of the Dinkart. *** Darmesteter declares that ancient Zoroastrianism is, in its main lines, the religion of the Median Magi, even though he assigns the latest possible date to the composition of the Avesta as now existing, and thinks he can discern in it Greek, Jewish, and Christian elements. It is a complicated system of religion, and presupposes a long period ofdevelopment. The doctrines are subtle; the ceremonial order of worship, loaded with strict observances, is interrupted at every moment by lawsprescribing minute details of ritual, * which were only put in practiceby priests and strict devotees, and were unknown to the mass of thefaithful. * Renan defined the Avesta as "the Code of a very small religious sect; it is a Talmud, a book of casuistry and strict observance. I have difficulty in believing that the great Persian empire, which, at least in religious matters, professed a certain breadth of ideas, could have had a law so strict. I think, that had the Persians possessed a sacred book of this description, the Greeks must have mentioned it. " The primitive, base of this religion is difficult to discern clearly:but we may recognise in it most of those beings or personifications ofnatural phenomena which were the chief objects of worship among all theancient nations of Western Asia--the stars, Sirius, the moon, the sun, water and fire, plants, animals beneficial to mankind, such as the cowand the dog, good and evil spirits everywhere present, and beneficentor malevolent souls of mortal men, but all systematised, graduated, andreduced to sacerdotal principles, according to the prescriptions of apowerful priesthood. Families consecrated to the service of the altarhad ended, as among the Hebrews, by separating themselves from the restof the nation and forming a special tribe, that of the Magi, which wasthe last to enter into the composition of the nation in historic times. All the Magi were not necessarily devoted to the service of religion, but all who did so devote themselves sprang from the Magian tribe; theAvesta, in its oldest form, was the sacred book of the Magi, as well asthat of the priests who handed down their religious tradition under thevarious dynasties, native or foreign, who bore rule over Iran. The Creator was described as "the whole circle of the heavens, " "themost steadfast among the gods, " for "he clothes himself with the solidvault of the firmament as his raiment, " "the most beautiful, the mostintelligent, he whose members are most harmoniously proportioned; hisbody was the light and the sovereign glory, the sun and the moon werehis eyes. " The theologians had gradually spiritualised the conceptionof this deity without absolutely disconnecting him from the materialuniverse. [Illustration: 012. Jpg THE AHURA-MAZDĀ OF THE BAS-RELIEFS OF PERSEPOLIS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Flandin and Coste. He remained under ordinary circumstances invisible to mortal eyes, and he could conceal his identity even from the highest gods, but heoccasionally manifested himself in human form. He borrowed in such casefrom Assyria the symbol of Assur, and the sculptors depict him with theupper part of his body rising above that winged disk which is carved ina hovering attitude on the pediments of Assyrian monuments or stelę. [Illustration: 012b. Jpg HYPOSTYLE OF HALL OF XERXES: DETAIL OFENTABLATURE] In later days he was portrayed under the form of a king of imposingstature and majestic mien, who revealed himself from time to time to theprinces of Iran. * * In a passage of Philo of Byblos the god is described as having the head of a falcon or an eagle, perhaps by confusion with one of the genii represented on the walls of the palaces. [Illustration: 013. Jpg AN IRANIAN GENIUS IN FORM OF A WINGED BULL] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph. He was named Ahurō-mazdāo or Ahura-mazdā, the omniscient lord, *_Spento-mainyus_, the spirit of good, _Mainyus-spenishtō_** the mostbeneficent of spirits. * _Ahura_ is derived from _Ahu_ = _Lord_: Mazdāo can be analysed into the component parts, _maz = great_, and _dāo = he who knows_. At first the two terms were interchangeable, and even in the Gāthas the form Mazda Ahura is employed much more often than the form Ahura Mazda. In the Achsemenian inscriptions, Auramazdā is only found as a single word, except in an inscription of Xerxes, where the two terms are in one passage separated and declined _Aurahya mazdāha_. The form Ormuzd, Ormazd, usually employed by Europeans, is that assumed by the name in modern Persian. ** These two names are given to him more especially in connection with his antagonism to Angrōmainyus. Himself uncreated, he is the creator of all things, but he is assistedin the administration of the universe by legions of beings, who are allsubject to him. * * Darius styles Ahura-mazdā, _mathishta bagānām_, the greatest of the gods, and Xerxes invokes the protection of Ahura-mazdā along with that of the gods. The classical writers also mention gods alongside of Ahura-mazdā as recognised not only among the Achęmenian Persians, but also among the Parthians. Darmesteter considers that the earliest Achęmenids worshipped Ahura-mazdā alone, "placing the other gods together in a subordinate and anonymous group: May Ahura-mazdā and the other gods protect me. " [Illustration: 014. Jpg AHURA-MAZDĀ BESTOWING THE TOKENS OF ROYALTY ON ANIRANIAN KING] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Dieulafoy. The most powerful among his ministers were originally nature-gods, suchas the sun, the moon, the earth, the winds, and the waters. The sunnyplains of Persia and Media afforded abundant witnesses of their power, as did the snow-clad peaks, the deep gorges through which rushed roaringtorrents, and the mountain ranges of Ararat or Taurus, where theforce of the subterranean fires was manifested by so many startlingexhibitions of spontaneous conflagration. * The same spiritualisingtendency which had already considerably modified the essential conceptof Ahura-mazdā, affected also that of the inferior deities, and tendedto tone down in them the grosser traits of their character. It hadalready placed at their head six genii of a superior order, sixever-active energies, who, after assisting their master at the creationof the universe, now presided under his guidance over the kingdoms andforces of nature. ** * All these inferior deities, heroes, and genii who presided over Persia, the royal family, and the different parts of the empire, are often mentioned in the most ancient classical authors that have come down to us. ** The six Amesha-spentas, with their several characteristics, are enumerated in a passage of the _De Iside_. This exposition of Persian doctrine is usually attributed to Theopompus, from which we may deduce the existence of a belief in the Amesha-spentas in the Achsemenian period. J. Darmesteter affirms, on the contrary, that "the author describes the Zoro-astrianism of his own times (the second century A. D. ), and quotes Theopompus for a special doctrine, that of the periods of the world's life. " Although this last point is correct, the first part of Darmesteter's theory does not seem to me justified by investigation. The whole passage of Plutarch is a well- arranged composition of uniform style, which may be regarded as an exposition of the system described by Theopompus, probably in the eighth of his Philippics. [Illustration: 016a. Jpg THE MOON-GOD] [Illustration: 016b. Jpg GOD OF THE WIND] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin of King Kanishka, published by Percy Gardner. These benevolent and immortal beings--_Amesha-spentas_--were, in theorder of precedence, Vohu-manō (good thought), Asha-vahista (perfectholiness), Khshathra-vairya (good government), Spenta-armaiti (meekpiety), Haurvatāt (health), Ameretāt (immortality). Each of them hada special domain assigned to him in which to display his energyuntrammelled: Vohu-manō had charge of cattle, Asha-vahista of fire, Khshathra-vairya of metals, Spenta-armaiti of the earth, Haurvatāt andAmeretāt of vegetation and of water. They were represented in humanform, either masculine as Vohu-manō and Asha-vahista, * or feminine asSpenta-armaiti, the daughter and spouse of Ahura-mazdā, who becamethe mother of the first man, Gayomaretan, and, through Gayomaretan, ancestress of the whole human race. * The image of Asha-vahista is known to us from coins of the Indo-Scythian kings of Bactriana. Vohu-manō is described as a young man. [Illustration: 017a. Jpg ATAR THE GOD OF FIRE] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin of King Kanishka, published by Percy Gardner. [Illustration: 017b. Jpg AURVATASPA] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from coin published by Percy Gardner. [Illustration: 017c. Jpg MITHRA] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin of King Huvishka, published by Percy Gardner. Sometimes Ahura-mazdā is himself included among the Amesha-spentas, thusbringing their number up to seven; sometimes his place is taken by acertain Sraōsha (obedience to the law), the first who offered sacrificeand recited the prayers of the ritual. Subordinate to these greatspirits were the Yazatas, scattered by thousands over creation, presiding over the machinery of nature and maintaining it in workingorder. Most of them received no special names, but many exercised wideauthority, and several were accredited by the people with an influencenot less than that of the greater deities themselves. Such Were theregent of the stars--Tishtrya, the bull with golden horns, Sirius, thesparkling one; Māo, the moon-god; the wind, Vāto; the atmosphere, Vayu, the strongest of the strong, the warrior with golden armour, who gathersthe storm and hurls it against the demon; Atar, fire under its principalforms, divine fire, sacred fire, and earthly fire; Vere-thraghna, theauthor of war and giver of victory; Aurva-taspa, the son of the waters, the lightning born among the clouds; and lastly, the spirit of the dawn, the watchful Mithra, "who, first of the celestial Yazatas, soars aboveMount Hara, * before the immortal sun with his swift steeds, who, firstin golden splendour, passes over the beautiful mountains and casts hisglance benign on the dwellings of the Aryans. "** * Hara is Haroberezaiti, or Elburz, the mountain over which the sun rises, "around which many a star revolves, where there is neither night nor darkness, no wind of cold or heat, no sickness leading to a thousand kinds of death, nor infection caused by the Daōvas, and whose summit is never reached by the clouds. " ** This is the Mithra whose religion became so powerful in Alexandrian and Roman times. His sphere of action is defined in the Bundehesh. Mithra was a charming youth of beautiful countenance, his headsurrounded with a radiant halo. The nymph Anāhita was adored under theform of one of the incarnations of the Babylonian goddess Mylitta, ayouthful and slender female, with well-developed breasts and broad hips, sometimes represented clothed in furs and sometimes nude. * Like theforeign goddess to whom she was assimilated, she was the dispenser offertility and of love; the heroes of antiquity, and even Ahura-mazdāhimself, had vied with one another in their worship of her, and she hadlavished her favours freely on all. ** * The popularity of these two deities was already well established at the period we are dealing with, for Herodotus mentions Mithra and confuses him with Anāhita. ** Her name Ardvī-Sūra Anāhita seems to signify _the lofty and immaculate power_. The less important Yazatas were hardly to be distinguished from theinnumerable multitude of Fravashis. The Fravasliis are the divine typesof all intelligent beings. They were originally brought into being byAhura-mazdā as a distinct species from the human, but they had allowedthemselves to be entangled in matter, and to be fettered in the bodiesof men, in order to hasten the final destruction of the demons and theadvent of the reign of good. * * The legend of the descent of the Fravashis to dwell among men is narrated in the Bundehesh. [Illustration: 018. Jpg MYLITTA-ANĀHITA] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Loftus [Illustration: 018a. Jpg NANA-ANĀHITA] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin of King Huvishka, published by Percy Gardner. Once incarnate, a Fravasliis devotes himself to the well-being of themortal with whom he is associated; and when once more released fromthe flesh, he continues the struggle against evil with an energy whoseefficacy is proportionate to the virtue and purity displayed in life bythe mortal to whom he has been temporarily joined. The last six daysof the year are dedicated to the Fravashis. They leave their heavenlyabodes at this time to visit the spots which were their earthlydwelling-places, and they wander through the villages inquiring, "Whowishes to hire us? Who will offer us a sacrifice? Who will make us theirown, welcome us, and receive us with plenteous offerings of food andraiment, with a prayer which bestows sanctity on him who offers it?" Andif they find a man to hearken to their request, they bless him: "May hishouse be blessed with herds of oxen and troops of men, a swift horseand a strongly built chariot, a man who knoweth how to pray to God, achieftain in the council who may ever offer us sacrifices with a handfilled with food and raiment, with a prayer which bestows sanctity onhim who offers it!" Ahura-mazdā created the universe, not by the workof his hands, but by the magic of his word, and he desired to create itentirely free from defects. His creation, however, can only exist bythe free play and equilibrium of opposing forces, to which he givesactivity: the incompatibility of tendency displayed by these forces, andtheir alternations of growth and decay, inspired the Iranians with theidea that they were the result of two contradictory principles, the onebeneficent and good, the other adverse to everything emanating from theformer. * * Spiegel, who at first considered that the Iranian dualism was derived from polytheism, and was a preliminary stage in the development of monotheism, held afterwards that a rigid monotheism had preceded this dualism. The classical writers, who knew Zoroastrianism at the height of its glory, never suggested that the two principles might be derived from a superior principle, nor that they were subject to such a principle. The Iranian books themselves nowhere definitely affirm that there existed a single principle distinct from the two opposing principles. In opposition to the god of light, they necessarily formed the idea ofa god of darkness, the god of the underworld, who presides over death, Angrō-mainyus. The two opposing principles reigned at first, each in hisown domain, as rivals, but not as irreconcilable adversaries: they wereconsidered as in fixed opposition to each other, and as having coexistedfor ages without coming into actual conflict, separated as they were bythe intervening void. As long as the principle of good was contentto remain shut up inactive in his barren glory, the principle of evilslumbered unconscious in a darkness that knew no beginning; but whenat last "the spirit who giveth increase"--Spentō-mainyus--determined tomanifest himself, the first throes of his vivifying activity roused frominertia the spirit of destruction and of pain, Angrō-mainyus. The heavenwas not yet in existence, nor the waters, nor the earth, nor ox, norfire, nor man, nor demons, nor brute beasts, nor any living thing, whenthe evil spirit hurled himself upon the light to quench it for ever, but Ahura-mazdā had already called forth the ministers of hiswill--Amźsha-spentas, Yazatas, Fravashis--and he recited the prayer oftwenty-one words in which all the elements of morality are summed up, the Ahuna-vairya: "The will of the Lord is the rule of good. Let thegifts of Vohu-manō be bestowed on the works accomplished, at thismoment, for Mazda. He makes Ahura to reign, he who protects the poor. "The effect of this prayer was irresistible: "When Ahura had pronouncedthe first part of the formula, Zānak Mīnoī, the spirit of destruction, bowed himself with terror; at the second part he fell upon his knees;and at the third and last he felt himself powerless to hurt thecreatures of Ahura-mazdā. "* * Theopompus was already aware of this alternation of good and bad periods. According to the tradition enshrined in the first chapter of the Bundehesh, it was the result of a sort of compact agreed upon at the beginning by Ahura-mazdā and Angrō-mainyus. Ahura-mazdā, rearing to be overcome if he entered upon the struggle immediately, but sure of final victory if he could gain time, proposed to his adversary a truce of nine thousand years, at the expiration of which the battle should begin. As soon as the compact was made, Angrō- mainyus realised that he had been tricked into taking a false step, but it was not till after three thousand years that he decided to break the truce and open the conflict. The strife, kindled at the beginning of time between the two gods, hasgone on ever since with alternations of success and defeat; each in turnhas the victory for a regular period of three thousand years; but whenthese periods are ended, at the expiration of twelve thousand years, evil will be finally and for ever defeated. While awaiting this blessedfulness of time, as Spentō-mainyus shows himself in all that is goodand beautiful, in light, virtue, and justice, so Angrō-mainyus is to beperceived in all that is hateful and ugly, in darkness, sin, and crime. Against the six Amesha-spentas he sets in array six spirits ofequal power--Akem-manō, evil thought; Andra, the devouring fire, whointroduces discontent and sin wherever he penetrates; Sauru, the flamingarrow of death, who inspires bloodthirsty tyrants, who incites men totheft and murder; Nāongaithya, arrogance and pride; Tauru, thirst; andZairi, hunger. * * The last five of these spirits are enumerated in the _Vendidad_, and the first, Akem-manō, is there replaced by Nasu, the chief spirit of evil. To the Yazatas he opposed the Daźvas, who never cease to tormentmankind, and so through all the ranks of nature he set over against eachgood and useful creation a counter-creation of rival tendency. "'Likea fly he crept into' and infected 'the whole universe. ' He rendered theworld as dark at full noonday as in the darkest night. He covered thesoil with vermin, with his creatures of venomous bite and poisonoussting, with serpents, scorpions, and frogs, so that there was not aspace as small as a needle's point but swarmed with his vermin. He smotevegetation, and of a sudden the plants withered.... He attacked theflames, and mingled them with smoke and dimness. The planets, with theirthousands of demons, dashed against the vault of heaven and waged war onthe stars, and the universe became darkened like a space which the fireblackens with its smoke. " And the conflict grew ever keener over theworld and over man, of whom the evil one was jealous, and whom he soughtto humiliate. [Illustration: 022. Jpg ONE OF THE BAD GENII, SUBJECT TO ANGRŌ-MAINYUS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken from the original bas-relief in glazed tiles in the Louvre. [Illustration: 023. Jpg THE KING STRUGGLING AGAINST AN EVIL GENIUS] Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph in Marcel Dieulafoy. The children of Angrō-mainyus disguised themselves under those monstrousforms in which the imagination of the Chaldęans had clothed the alliesof Mummu-Tiamāt, such as lions with bulls' heads, and the wings andclaws of eagles, which the Achęmenian king combats on behalf of hissubjects, boldly thrusting them through with his short sword. Aźshma ofthe blood-stained lance, terrible in wrath, is the most trusted leaderof these dread bands, * the chief of twenty other Daźvas of repulsiveaspect--Astō-vīdhōtu, the demon of death, who would devote todestruction the estimable Fravashis;** Apaosha, the enemy of Tishtryathe wicked black horse, the bringer of drought, who interferes with thedistribution of the fertilising waters; and Būiti, who essayed to killZoroaster at his birth. *** * The name Aźshma means _anger_. He is the Asmodeus, Aźshmo- daevō, of Rabbinic legends. ** The name of this demon signifies _He who separates the bones_. *** The Greater Bundehesh connects the demon Būiti with the Indian Buddha, and J. Darmestefer seems inclined to accept this interpretation. In this case we must either admit that the demon Būiti is of relatively late origin, or that he has, in the legend of Zoroaster, taken the place of a demon whose name resembled his own closely enough to admit of the assimilation. The female demons, the Bruges, the Incubi (Yātus), the Succubi(Pairīka), the Peris of our fairy tales, mingled familiarly with mankindbefore the time of the prophet, and contracted with them fruitfulalliances, but Zoroaster broke up their ranks, and prohibited themfrom becoming incarnate in any form but that of beasts; their hatred, however, is still unquenched, and their power will only be effectuallyoverthrown at the consummation of time. It is a matter of uncertaintywhether the Medes already admitted the possibility of a freshrevelation, preparing the latest generations of mankind for the adventof the reign of good. The traditions enshrined in the sacred booksof Iran announce the coming of three prophets, sons of Zoroaster--Ukhshyatereta, Ukhshyatnemō, and Saoshyant* --who shall bring aboutuniversal salvation. * The legend ran that they had been conceived in the waters of the lake Kansu. The name Saoshyant signifies _the useful one, the saviour_; Ukshyate-reta, _he who malces the good increase_; Ukshyatnemō, _he who makes prayer increase_. Saoshyant, assisted by fifteen men and fifteen pure women, who havealready lived on earth, and are awaiting their final destiny in a magicslumber, shall offer the final sacrifice, the virtue of which shallbring about the resurrection of the dead. "The sovereign light shallaccompany him and his friends, when he shall revivify the world andransom it from old age and death, from corruption and decay, and shallrender it eternally living, eternally growing, and master of itself. "The fatal conflict shall be protracted, but the champions of Saoshyantshall at length obtain the victory. "Before them shall bow Aźshma of theblood-stained lance and of ominous renown, and Saoshyant shall strikedown the she-demon of the unholy light, the daughter of darkness. Akem-manō strikes, but Vohu-manō shall strike him in his turn; the lyingword shall strike, but the word of truth shall strike him in his turn;Haurvatāt and Ameretāfc shall strike down hunger and thirst; Haurvatātand Ameretāt shall strike down terrible hunger and terrible thirst. "Angrō-mainyus himself shall be paralysed with terror, and shall beforced to confess the supremacy of good: he shall withdraw into thedepths of hell, whence he shall never again issue forth, and all thereanimated beings devoted to the Mazdean law shall live an eternity ofpeace and contentment. Man, therefore, incessantly distracted between the two principles, laidwait for by the Baźvas, defended by the Yazatas, must endeavour to actaccording to law and justice in the condition in which fate has placedhim. He has been raised up here on earth to contribute as far as in himlies to the increase of life and of good, and in proportion as he worksfor this end or against it, is he the _ashavan_, the pure, the faithfulone on earth and the blessed one in heaven, or the _anashavan_, thelawless miscreant who counteracts purity. The highest grade in thehierarchy of men belongs of right to the Mage or the _āthravan_, to thepriest whose voice inspires the demons with fear, or the soldier whoseclub despatches the impious, but a place of honour at their side isassigned to the peasant, who reclaims from the power of Angrō-mainyus thedry and sterile fields. Among the places where the earth thrives mostjoyously is reckoned that "where a worshipper of Ahura-mazdā builds ahouse, with a chaplain, with cattle, with a wife, with sons, with a fairflock; where man grows the most corn, herbage, and fruit trees; where hespreads water on a soil without water, and drains off water wherethere is too much of it. " He who sows corn, sows good, and promotes theMazdean faith; "he nourishes the Mazdean religion as fifty men would dorocking a child in the cradle, five hundred women giving it suck fromtheir breasts. * When the corn was created the Daźvas leaped, when itsprouted the Daźvas lost courage, when the stem set the Daźvas wept, when the ear swelled the Daźvas fled. In the house where corn ismouldering the Daźvas lodge, but when the corn sprouts, one might saythat a hot iron is being turned round in their mouths. " And the reasonof their horror is easily divined: "Whoso eats not, has no power eitherto accomplish a valiant work of religion, or to labour with valour, or yet to beget children valiantly; it is by eating that the universelives, and it dies from not eating. " The faithful follower of Zoroasterowes no obligation towards the impious man or towards a stranger, ** butis ever bound to render help to his coreligionist. * The original text says in a more enigmatical fashion, "he nourishes the religion of Mazdā as a hundred feet of men and a thousand breasts of women might do. " ** Charity is called in Parsee language, _ashō-dād_ the _gift to a pious man_, or the _gift of piety_, and the pious man, the _ashavan_, is by definition the worshipper of Ahura-mazdā alone. He will give a garment to the naked, and by so doing will wound Zemaka, the demon of winter. He will never refuse food to the hungry labourer, under pain of eternal torments, and his charity will extend even tothe brute beasts, provided that they belong to the species created byAhura-mazdā: he has duties towards them, and their complaints, heardin heaven, shall be fatal to him later on if he has provoked them. Asha-vahista will condemn to hell the cruel man who has ill-treated theox, or allowed his flocks to suffer; and the killing of a hedgehog isno less severely punished--for does not a hedgehog devour the antswho steal the grain? The dog is in every case an especially sacredanimal--the shepherd's dog, the watchdog, the hunting-dog, even theprowling dog. It is not lawful to give any dog a blow which renders himimpotent, or to slit his ears, or to cut his foot, without incurringgrave responsibilities in this world and in the next; it is necessary tofeed the dog well, and not to throw bones to him which are too hard, norhave his food served hot enough to burn his tongue or his throat. Forthe rest, the faithful Zoroastrian was bound to believe in his god, tooffer to him the orthodox prayers and sacrifices, to be simple in heart, truthful, the slave of his pledged word, loyal in his very smallestacts. If he had once departed from the right way, he could only returnto it by repentance and by purification, accompanied by pious deeds:to exterminate noxious animals, the creatures of Angrō-mainyus and theabode of his demons, such as the frog, the scorpion, the serpent orthe ant, to clear the sterile tracts, to restore impoverished land, to construct bridges over running water, to distribute implements ofhusbandry to pions men, or to build them a house, to give a pure andhealthy maiden in marriage to a just man, --these were so many means ofexpiation appointed by the prophet. * Marriage was strictly obligatory, **and seemed more praiseworthy in proportion as the kinship existingbetween the married pair was the closer: not only was the sister unitedin marriage to her brother, as in Egypt, but the father to his daughter, and the mother to her son, at least among the Magi. * A passage in the _Vendidad_ even enumerates how many noisome beasts must be slain to accomplish one full work of expiation--"to kill 1000 serpents of those who drag themselves upon the belly, and 2000 of the other species, 1000 land frogs or 2000 water frogs, 1000 ants who steal the grain, " and so on. ** The _Vendidad_ says, "And I tell thee, O Spitama Zarathustra, the man who has a wife is above him who lives in continency;" and, as we have seen in the text, one of these forms of expiation consisted in "marrying to a worthy man a young girl who has never known a man" (_Vendidad_, 14, § 15). Herodotus of old remarked that one of the chief merits in an Iranian was to have many children: the King of Persia encouraged fecundity in his realm, and awarded a prize each year to that one of his subjects who could boast the most numerous progeny. Polygamy was also encouraged and widely practised: the code imposed nolimit on the number of wives and concubines, and custom was in favour ofa man's having as many wives as his fortune permitted him to maintain. On the occasion of a death, it was forbidden to burn the corpse, to buryit, or to cast it into a river, as it would have polluted the fire, the earth, or the water--an unpardonable offence. The corpse could bedisposed of in different ways. The Persians were accustomed to cover itwith a thick layer of wax, and then to bury it in the ground: the waxcoating obviated the pollution which direct contact would have broughtupon the soil. The Magi, and probably also strict devotees, followingtheir example, exposed the corpse in the open air, abandoning it to thebirds or beasts of prey. It was considered a great misfortune if theserespected the body, for it was an almost certain indication of the wrathof Ahura-mazdā, and it was thought that the defunct had led an evillife. When the bones had been sufficiently stripped of flesh, they werecollected together, and deposited either in an earthenware urn or in astone ossuary with a cover, or in a monumental tomb either hollowed outin the heart of the mountain or in the living rock, or raised upabove the level of the ground. Meanwhile the soul remained in theneighbourhood for three days, hovering near the head of the corpse, andby the recitation of prayers it experienced, according to its conditionof purity or impurity, as much of joy or sadness as the whole worldexperiences. When the third night was past, the just soul set forthacross luminous plains, refreshed by a perfumed breeze, and its goodthoughts and words and deeds took shape before it "under the guise of ayoung maiden, radiant and strong, with well-developed bust, noble mien, and glorious face, about fifteen years of age, and as beautiful as themost beautiful;" the unrighteous soul, on the contrary, directed itscourse towards the north, through a tainted land, amid the squalls of apestilential hurricane, and there encountered its past ill deeds, underthe form of an ugly and wicked young woman, the ugliest and most wickedit had ever seen. The genius Rashnu Razishta, the essentially truthful, weighed its virtues or vices in an unerring balance, and acquitted orCondemned it on the impartial testimony of its past life. On issuingfrom the judgment-hall, the soul arrived at the approach to the bridgeCinvaut, which, thrown across the abyss of hell, led to paradise. Thesoul, if impious, was unable to cross this bridge, but was hurled downinto the abyss, where it became the slave of Angrō-mainyus. If pure, itcrossed the bridge without difficulty by the help of the angel Sraōsha, and was welcomed by Vohu-manō, who conducted it before the throne ofAhura-mazdā, in the same way as he had led Zoroaster, and assigned to itthe post which it should occupy until the day of the resurrection of thebody. * * All this picture of the fate of the soul is taken from the _Vendidad_, where the fate of the just is described, and in the _Yasht_, where the condition of faithful and impious souls respectively is set forth on parallel lines. The classical authors teach us nothing on this subject, and the little they actually say only proves that the Persians believed in the immortality of the soul. The main outlines of the picture here set forth go back to the times of the Achęmenids and the Medes, except the abstract conception of the goddess who leads the soul of the dead as an incarnation of his good or evil deeds. The religious observances enjoined on the members of the priestly castewere innumerable and minute. Ahura-mazdā and his colleagues had not, as was the fashion among the Assyrians and Egyptians, either temples ortabernacles, and though they were represented sometimes under human oranimal forms, and even in some cases on bas-reliefs, yet no one everventured to set up in their sanctuaries those so-called animated orprophetic statues to which the majority of the nations had rendered orwere rendering their solicitous homage. Altars, however, were erectedon the tops of hills, in palaces, or in the centre of cities, on whichfires were kindled in honour of the inferior deities or of the supremegod himself. [Illustration: 031. Jpg THE TWO IRANIAN ALTAKRAT NAKHSH-Ī-RUSTEM] Drawn by Boudier, from a heliogravure in Marcel Dieulafoy. Two altars were usually set up together, and they are thus found hereand there among the ruins, as at Nakhsh-ī-Kustem, the necropolis ofPersepolis, where a pair of such altars exist; these are cut, each outof a single block, in a rocky mass which rises some thirteen feet abovethe level of the surrounding plain. They are of cubic form andsquat appearance, looking like towers flanked at the four corners bysupporting columns which are connected by circular arches; above anarrow moulding rises a crest of somewhat triangular projections; thehearth is hollowed out on the summit of each altar. * * According to Perrot and Chipiez, "it is not impossible that these altars were older than the great buildings of Persepolis, and that they were erected for the old Persian town which Darius raised to the position of capital. " At Meshed-ī-Murgāb, on the site of the ancient Pasargadas, the altarshave disappeared, but the basements on which they were erected arestill visible, as also the flight of eight steps by which they wereapproached. Those altars on which burned, a perpetual fire were notleft exposed to the open air: they would have run too great a riskof contracting impurities, such as dust borne by the wind, flights ofbirds, dew, rain, or snow. They were enclosed in slight structures, wellprotected by walls, and attaining in some cases considerable dimensions, or in pavilion-shaped edifices of stone adorned with columns. [Illustration: 032. Jpg THE TWO IRANIAN ALTARS OF MURGAB] Drawn by Boudier, from Plandin and Coste. The sacrificial rites were of long duration, and frequent, and wererendered very complex by interminable manual acts, ceremonial gestures, and incantations. [Illustration: 032b. Jpg THE OCCUPATIONS OF ANI IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS] In cases where the altar was not devoted to maintaining a perpetualfire, it was kindled when necessary with small twigs previously barkedand purified, and was subsequently fed with precious woods, preferablycypress or laurel;* care was taken not to quicken the flame by blowing, for the human breath would have desecrated the fire by merely passingover it; death was the punishment for any one who voluntarily committedsuch a heinous sacrilege. The recognised offering consisted of flowers, bread, fruit, and perfumes, but these were often accompanied, as in allancient religions, by a bloody sacrifice; the sacrifice of a horse wasconsidered the most efficacious, but an ox, a cow, a sheep, a camel, an ass, or a stag was frequently offered: in certain circumstances, especially when it was desired to conciliate the favour of the god ofthe underworld, a human victim, probably as a survival of very ancientrites was preferred. ** * Pausanias, who witnessed the cult as practised at Hierocęsarsea, remarked the curious colour of the ashes heaped upon the altar. * Most modern writers deny the authenticity of Herodotus' account, because a sacrifice of this kind is opposed to the spirit of the Magian religion, which is undoubtedly the case, as far as the latest form of the religion is concerned; but the testimony of Herodotus is so plain that the fact itself must be considered as indisputable. We may note that the passage refers to the foundation of a city; and if we remember how persistent was the custom of human sacrifice among ancient races at the foundation of buildings, we shall be led to the conclusion that the ceremony described by the Greek historian was a survival of a very ancient usage, which had not yet fallen entirely into desuetude at the Achęmenian epoch. [Illustration: 033. Jpg THE SACRED FIRE BURNING ON THE ALTAR] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the impression of a Persian intaglio. The king, whose royal position made him the representative ofAhura-mazdā on earth, was, in fact, a high priest, and was himselfable to officiate at the altar, but no one else could dispense with themediation of the Magi. The worshippers proceeded in solemn processionto the spot where the ceremony was to take place, and there the priest, wearing the tiara on his head, recited an invocation in a slow andmysterious voice, and implored the blessings of heaven on the kingand nation. He then slaughtered the victim by a blow on the head, anddivided it into portions, which he gave back to the offerer withoutreserving any of them, for Ahura-mazdā required nothing but the soul;in certain cases, the victim was entirely consumed by fire, but morefrequently nothing but a little of the fat and some of the entrailswere taken to feed and maintain the flame, and sometimes even this wasomitted. * Sacrifices were of frequent occurrence. Without mentioningthe extraordinary occasions on which a king would have a thousand bullsslain at one time, ** the Achęmenian kings killed each day a thousandbullocks, asses, and stags: sacrifice under such circumstances wasanother name for butchery, the object of which was to furnish the courtwith a sufficient supply of pure meat. The ceremonial bore resemblancein many ways to that still employed by the modern Zoroastrians of Persiaand India. * A relic of this custom may be discerned in the expiatory sacrifice decreed in the _Vendidad_: "He shall sacrifice a thousand head of small cattle, and he shall place their entrails devoutly on the fire, with libations. " ** The number 1000 seems to have had some ritualistic significance, for it often recurs in the penances imposed on the faithful as expiation for their sins: thus it was enjoined to slay 1000 serpents, 1000 frogs, 1000 ants who steal the grain, 1000 head of small cattle, 1000 swift horses, 1000 camels, 1000 brown oxen. The officiating priest covered his mouth with the bands which fell fromhis mitre, to prevent the god from being polluted by his breath; he heldin his hand the baresman, or sacred bunch of tamarisk, and prepared themysterious liquor from the haoma plant. * He was accustomed each morningto celebrate divine service before the sacred fire, not to speak of theperiodic festivals in which he shared the offices with all the membersof his tribe, such as the feast of Mithra, the feast of the Fravashis, **the feast commemorating the rout of Angrō-mainyus, *** the feast of theSaksea, during which the slaves were masters of the house. **** * The drink mentioned by the author of the _De Iside_, which was extracted from the plant Omōmi, and which the Magi offered to the god of the underworld, is certainly the haoma. The rite mentioned by the Greek author, which appears to be an incantation against Ahriman, required, it seems, a potion in which the blood of a wolf was a necessary ingredient: this questionable draught was then carried to a place where the sun's rays never shone, and was there sprinkled on the ground as a libation. ** Menander speaks of this festival as conducted in his own times, and tells us that it was called Eurdigan; modern authorities usually admit that it goes back to the times of the Achęmenids or even beyond. *** Agathias says that every worshipper of Ahura-mazdā is enjoined to kill the greatest possible number of animals created by Angrō-mainyus, and bring to the Magi the fruits of his hunting. Herodotus had already spoken of this destruction of life as one of the duties incumbent on every Persian, and this gives probability to the view of modern writers that the festival went back to the Achęmenian epoch. **** The festival of the Sakoa is mentioned by Ctesias. It was also a Babylonian festival, and most modern authorities conclude from this double use of the name that the festival was borrowed from the Babylonians by the Persians, but this point is not so certain as it is made out to be, and at any rate the borrowing must have taken place very early, for the festival was already well established in the Achęmenian period. All the Magi were not necessarily devoted to the priesthood; butthose only became apt in the execution of their functions who had beendedicated to them from infancy, and who, having received the necessaryinstruction, were duly consecrated. These adepts were divided intoseveral classes, of which three at least were never confounded in theirfunctions--the sorcerers, the interpreters of dreams, and the mostvenerated sages--and from these three classes were chosen the rulingbody of the order and its supreme head. Their rule of life wasstrict and austere, and was encumbered with a thousand observancesindispensable to the preservation of perfect purity in their persons, their altars, their victims, and their sacrificial vessels andimplements. The Magi of highest rank abstained from every form ofliving thing as food, and the rest only partook of meat under certainrestrictions. Their dress was unpretentious, they wore no jewels, andobserved strict fidelity to the marriage vow;* and the virtues withwhich they were accredited obtained for them, from very early times, unbounded influence over the minds of the common people as well as overthose of the nobles: the king himself boasted of being their pupil, andtook no serious step in state affairs without consulting Ahura-mazdā orthe other gods by their mediation. The classical writers maintain thatthe Magi often cloaked monstrous vices under their apparent strictness, and it is possible that this was the case in later days, but even thenmoral depravity was probably rather the exception than the rule amongthem:*** the majority of the Magi faithfully observed the rules ofhonest living and ceremonial purity enjoined on them in the books handeddown by their ancestors. * Clement of Alexandria assures us that they were strictly celibate, but besides the fact that married Magi are mentioned several times, celibacy is still considered by Zoroastrians an inferior state to that of marriage. ** In the Greek period, a spurious epitaph of Darius, son of Hystaspes, was quoted, in which the king says of himself, "I was the pupil of the Magi. " *** These accusations are nearly all directed against their incestuous marriages: it seems that the classical writers took for a refinement of debauchery what really was before all things a religious practice. There is reason to believe that the Magi were all-powerful among theMedes, and that the reign of Astyages was virtually the reign of thepriestly caste; but all the Iranian states did not submit so patientlyto their authority, and the Persians at last proved openly refractory. Their kings, lords of Susa as well as of Pasargadse, wielded all theresources of Elam, and their military power must have equalled, if itdid not already surpass, that of their suzerain lords. Their tribes, less devoted to the manner of living of the Assyrians and Chaldęans, had preserved a vigour and power of endurance which the Medes no longerpossessed; and they needed but an ambitious and capable leader, to riserapidly from the rank of subjects to that of rulers of Iran, and tobecome in a short time masters of Asia. Such a chief they found inCyrus, * son of Cambyses; but although no more illustrious name than hisoccurs in the list of the founders of mighty empires, the history of noother has suffered more disfigurement from the imagination of his ownsubjects or from the rancour of the nations he had conquered. ** * The original form of the name is Kūru, Kūrush, with a long _o_, which forces us to reject the proposed connection with the name of the Indian hero Kuru, in which the _u_ is short. Numerous etymologies of the name Cyrus have been proposed. The Persians themselves attributed to it the sense of _the Sun_. ** We possess two entirely different versions of the history of the origin of Cyrus, but one, that of Herodotus, has reached us intact, while that of Ctesias is only known to us in fragments from extracts made by Nicolas of Damascus, and by Photius. Spiegel and Duncker thought to recognise in the tradition followed by Ctesias one of the Persian accounts of the history of Cyrus, but Bauer refuses to admit this hypothesis, and prefers to consider it as a romance put together by the author, according to the taste of his own times, from facts partly different from those utilised by Herodotus, and partly borrowed from Herodotus himself: but it should very probably be regarded as an account of Median origin, in which the founder of the Persian empire is portrayed in the most unfavourable light. Or perhaps it may be regarded as the form of the legend current among the Pharnaspids who established themselves as satraps of Dascylium in the time of the Achęmenids, and to whom the royal house of Cappadocia traced its origin. It is almost certain that the account given by Herodotus represents a Median version of the legend, and, considering the important part played in it by Harpagus, probably that version which was current among the descendants of that nobleman. The historian Dinon, as far as we can judge from the extant fragments of his work, and from the abridgment made by Trogus Pompeius, adopted the narrative of Ctesias, mingling with it, however, some details taken from Herodotus and the romance of Xenophon, the Cyropodia. The Medes, who could not forgive him for having made them subject totheir ancient vassals, took delight in holding him up to scorn, and notbeing able to deny the fact of his triumph, explained it by the adoptionof tortuous and despicable methods. They would not even allow that hewas of royal birth, but asserted that he was of ignoble origin, the sonof a female goatherd and a certain Atradates, * who, belonging tothe savage clan of the Mardians, lived by brigandage. Cyrus himself, according to this account, spent his infancy and early youth in acondition not far short of slavery, employed at first in sweeping outthe exterior portions of the palace, performing afterwards the sameoffice in the private apartments, subsequently promoted to the charge ofthe lamps and torches, and finally admitted to the number of the royalcupbearers who filled the king's goblet at table. * According to one of the historians consulted by Strabo, Cyrus himself, and not his father, was called Atradates. [Illustration: 039. Jpg A ROYAL HUNTING-PARTY IN HUN] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the silver vase in the Museum of the Hermitage. When he was at length enrolled in the bodyguard, * he won distinction byhis skill in all military exercises, and having risen from rank to rank, received command of an expedition against the Cadusians. * The tradition reproduced by Dinon narrated that Cyrus had begun by serving among the Kavasses, the three hundred staff-bearers who accompanied the sovereign when he appeared in public, and that he passed next into the royal body- guard, and that once having attained this rank, he passed rapidly through all the superior grades of the military profession. On the march he fell in with a Persian groom named OEbaras, * whohad been cruelly scourged for some misdeed, and was occupied in thetransportation of manure in a boat: in obedience to an oracle the twounited their fortunes, and together devised a vast scheme for liberatingtheir compatriots from the Median yoke. * This OEbaras whom Ctesias makes the accomplice of Cyrus, seems to be an antedated forestallment of theoebaras whom the tradition followed by Herodotus knows as master of the horse under Darius, and to whom that king owed his elevation to the throne. How Atradates secretly prepared the revolt of the Mardians; how Cyrusleft his camp to return to the court at Ecbatana, and obtained fromAstyages permission to repair to his native country under pretext ofoffering sacrifices, but in reality to place himself at the head of theconspirators; how, finally, the indiscretion of a woman revealed thewhole plot to a eunuch of the harem, and how he warned Astyages in themiddle of his evening banquet by means of a musician or singing-girl, was frequently narrated by the Median bards in their epic poems, andhence the story spread until it reached in later times even as far asthe Greeks. * * According to Ctesias, it was a singing-girl who revealed the existence of the plot to Astyages; according to Dinon, it was the bard Angarźs. Windischmann has compared this name with that of the Vedic guild of singers, the Angira. Astyages, roused to action by the danger, abandons the pleasures of thechase in which his activity had hitherto found vent, sets out on thetrack of the rebel, wins a preliminary victory on the Hyrba, and killsthe father of Cyrus: some days after, he again overtakes the rebels, atthe entrance to the defiles leading to Pasargadse, and for the secondtime fortune is on the point of declaring in his favour, when thePersian women, bringing back their husbands and sons to the conflict, urge them on to victory. The fame of their triumph having spread abroad, the satraps and provinces successfully declared for the conqueror;Hyrcania, first, followed by the Parthians, the Sakae, and theBactrians: Astyages was left almost alone, save for a few faithfulfollowers, in the palace at Ecbatana. His daughter Amytis and hisson-in-law Spitamas concealed him so successfully on the top of thepalace, that he escaped discovery up to the moment when Cyrus was onthe point of torturing his grandchildren to force them to reveal hishiding-place: thereupon he gave himself up to his enemies, but was atlength, after being subjected to harsh treatment for a time, set atliberty and entrusted with the government of a mountain tribe dwellingto the south-east of the Caspian Sea, that of the Barcanians. Later onhe perished through the treachery of OEbaras, and his corpse was leftunburied in the desert, but by divine interposition relays of lions weresent to guard it from the attacks of beasts of prey: Cyrus, acquaintedwith this miraculous circumstance, went in search of the body and gaveit a magnificent burial. * Another legend asserted, on the contrary, that Cyrus was closely connected with the royal line of Cyaxares; thistradition was originally circulated among the great Median families whoattached themselves to the Achaemenian dynasty. ** * The passage in Herodotus leads Marquart to believe that the murder of Astyages formed part of the primitive legend, but was possibly attributed to Cambysos, son of Cyrus, rather than to OEbaras, the companion of the conqueror's early years. ** This is the legend as told to Herodotus in Asia Minor, probably by the members of the family of Harpagus, which the Greek historian tried to render credible by interpreting the miraculous incidents in a rationalising manner. [Illustration: 042. Jpg REMAINS OF THE PALACE OF ECBATANA] Drawn by Boudier, from Coste and Flandin. According to this legend Astyages had no male heirs, and the sceptrewould have naturally descended from him to his daughter Mandanź andher sons. Astyages was much alarmed by a certain dream concerning hisdaughter: he dreamt that water gushed forth so copiously from herwomb as to flood not only Ecbatana, but the whole of Asia, and theinterpreters, as much terrified as himself, counselled him not to giveMandanź in marriage to a Persian noble of the race of the Achęmenids, named Cambyses; but a second dream soon troubled the security into whichthis union had lulled him: he saw issuing from his daughter's womb avine whose branches overshadowed Asia, and the interpreters, being oncemore consulted, predicted that a grandson was about to be born to himwhose ambition would cost him his crown. He therefore bade a certainnobleman of his court, named Harpagus--he whose descendants preservedthis version of the story of Cyrus--to seize the infant and put it todeath as soon as its mother should give it birth; but the man, touchedwith pity, caused the child to be exposed in the woods by one of theroyal shepherds. A bitch gave suck to the tiny creature, who, however, would soon have succumbed to the inclemency of the weather, had not theshepherd's wife, being lately delivered of a still-born son, persuadedher husband to rescue the infant, whom she nursed with the sametenderness as if he had been her own child. The dog was, as we know, asacred animal among the Iranians: the incident of the bitch seems, then, to have been regarded by them as an indication of divine intervention, but the Greeks were shocked by the idea, and invented an explanationconsonant with their own customs. They supposed that the woman had bornethe name of Spakō: Spakō signifying _bitch_ in the language of Media. * * Herodotus asserts that the child's foster-mother was called in Greek _Kynō_, in Median _Spalcō_, which comes to the same thing, for _spaha_ means _bitch_ in Median. Further on he asserts that the parents of the child heard of the name of his nurse with joy, as being of good augury; "and, in order that the Persians might think that Cyrus had been preserved alive by divine agency, _they spread abroad the report that Cyrus had been suckled by a bitch_. And thus arose the fable commonly accepted. " Trogus Pompeius received the original story probably through Dinon, and inserted it in his book. Cyrus grew to boyhood, and being accepted by Mandanź as her son, returned to the court; his grandfather consented to spare his life, but, to avenge himself on Harpagus, he caused the limbs of the nobleman's ownson to be served up to him at a feast. Thenceforth Harpagus had butone idea, to overthrow the tyrant and transfer the crown to the youngprince: his project succeeded, and Cyrus, having overcome Astyages, was proclaimed king by the Medes as well as by the Persians. The realhistory of Cyrus, as far as we can ascertain it, was less romantic. Wegather that Kurush, known to us as Cyrus, succeeded his father Cambysesas ruler of Anshān about 559 or 558 B. C. , * and that he revolted againstAstyages in 553 or 552 B. C. , ** and defeated him. The Median armythereupon seizing its own leader, delivered him into the hands of theconqueror: Ecbatana was taken and sacked, and the empire fell at oneblow, or, more properly speaking, underwent a transformation (550 B. C. ). The transformation was, in fact, an internal revolution in which thetwo peoples of the same race changed places. The name of the Medes lostnothing of the prestige which it enjoyed in foreign lands, but that ofthe Persians was henceforth united with it, and shared its renown: likeAstyages and his predecessors, Cyrus and his successors reigned equallyover the two leading branches of the ancient Iranian stock, but whereasthe former had been kings of the Medes and Persians, the latter becamehenceforth kings of the Persians and Medes. *** * The length of Cyrus' reign is fixed at thirty years by Ctesias, followed by Dinon and Trogus Pompeius, but at twenty-nine years by Herodotus, whose computation I here follow. Hitherto the beginning of his reign has been made to coincide with the fall of Astyages, which was consequently placed in 569 or 568 B. C. , but the discovery of the _Annals of Nabonidus_ obliges us to place the taking of Ecbatana in the sixth year of the Babylonian king, which corresponds to the year 550 B. C. , and consequently to hold that Cyrus reckoned his twenty-nine years from the moment when he succeeded his father Cambyses. ** The inscription on the _Rassam Cylinder of Abu-Habba_, seems to make the fall of the Median king, who was suzerain of the Scythians of Harrān, coincide with the third year of Nabonidus, or the year 553-2 B. C. But it is only the date of the commencement of hostilities between Cyrus and Astyages which is here furnished, and this manner of interpreting the text agrees with the statement of the Median traditions handed down by the classical authors, that three combats took place between Astyages and Cyrus before the final victory of the Persians. *** This equality of the two peoples is indicated by the very terms employed by Darius, whom he speaks of them, in the _Great Inscription of Behistun_. He says, for example, in connection with the revolt of the false Smerdis, that "the deception prevailed greatly in the land, in Persia and Media as well as in the other provinces, " and further on, that "the whole people rose, and passed over from Cambyses to him, Persia and Media as well as the other countries. " In the same way he mentions "the army of Persians and Medes which was with him, " and one sees that he considered Medes and Persians to be on exactly the same footing. The change effected was so natural that their nearest neighbours, theChaldęans, showed no signs of uneasiness at the outset. They confinedthemselves to the bare registration of the fact in their annals at theappointed date, without comment, and Nabonidus in no way deviated fromthe pious routine which it had hitherto pleased him to follow. Undera sovereign so good-natured there was little likelihood of war, at allevents with external foes, but insurrections were always breaking out indifferent parts of his territory, and we read of difficulties in Khumźin the first year of his reign, in Hamath in his second year, andtroubles in Plionicia in the third year, which afforded an opportunityfor settling the Tyrian question. Tyre had led a far from peacefulexistence ever since the day when, from sheer apathy, she had acceptedthe supremacy of Nebuchadrezzar. * * All these events are known through the excerpt from Menander preserved to us by Josephus in his treatise _Against Apion_. Baal II. Had peacefully reigned there for ten years (574-564), but afterhis death the people had overthrown the monarchy, and various _suffetes_had followed one another rapidly--Eknibaal ruled two months, Khelbes tenmonths, the high priest Abbar three months, the two brothers Muttonand Gerastratus six years, all of them no doubt in the midst of endlessdisturbances; whereupon a certain Baalezor restored the royal dignity, but only to enjoy it for the space of one year. On his death, theinhabitants begged the Chaldęans to send them, as a successor to thecrown, one of those princes whom, according to custom, Baal had not longpreviously given over as hostages for a guarantee of his loyalty, andNergal-sharuzur for this purpose selected from their number Mahar-baal, who was probably a son of Ithobaal (558-557). * When, at the end of fouryears, the death of Mahar-baal left the throne vacant (554-553), theTyrians petitioned for his brother Hirōm, and Nabonidus, who was thenengaged in Syria, came south as far as Phoenicia and installed theprince. ** * The fragment of Menander does not give the Babylonian king's name, but a simple chronological calculation proves him to have been Nergal-sharuzur. ** _Annals of Nabonidus_, where mention is made of a certain Nabu-makhdan-uzur--but the reading of the name is uncertain --who seems to be in revolt against the Chaldęans. Floigl has very ingeniously harmonised the dates of the Annals with those obtained from the fragment of Menander, and has thence concluded that the object of the expedition of the third year was the enthroning of Hirōm which is mentioned in the fragment, and during whose fourteenth year Cyrus became King of Babylon. This took place at the very moment when Cyrus was preparing hisexpedition against Astyages; and the Babylonian monarch took advantageof the agitation into which the Medes were thrown by this invasion, tocarry into execution a project which he had been planning ever since hisaccession. Shortly after that event he had had a dream, in which Marduk, the great lord, and Sin, the light of heaven and earth, had appearedon either side of his couch, the former addressing him in the followingwords: "Nabonidus, King of Babylon, with the horses of thy chariot bringbrick, rebuild E-khul-khul, the temple of Harrān, that Sin, the greatlord, may take up his abode therein. " Nabonidus had respectfully pointedout that the town was in the hands of the Scythians, who were subjectsof the Medes, but the god had replied: "The Scythian of whom thouspeakest, he, his country and the kings his protectors, are no more. "Cyrus was the instrument of the fulfilment of the prophecy. Nabonidustook possession of Harrān without difficulty, and immediately put thenecessary work in hand. This was, indeed, the sole benefit that hederived from the changes which were taking place, and it is probablethat his inaction was the result of the enfeebled condition of theempire. The country over which he ruled, exhausted by the Assyrianconquest, and depopulated by the Scythian invasions, had not had time torecover its forces since it had passed into the hands of the Chaldęans;and the wars which Nebuchadrezzar had been obliged to undertake for thepurpose of strengthening his own power, though few in number and notfraught with danger, had tended to prolong the state of weakness intowhich it had sunk. If the hero of the dynasty who had conquered Egypthad not ventured to measure his strength with the Median princes, andif he had courted the friendship not only of the warlike Cyaxares but ofthe effeminate Astyages, it would not be prudent for Nabonidus to comeinto collision with the victorious new-comers from the heart of Iran. Chaldsea doubtless was right in avoiding hostilities, at all events solong as she had to bear the brunt of them alone, but other nationshad not the same motives for exercising prudence, and Lydia was fullyassured that the moment had come for her to again take up the ambitiousdesigns which the treaty of 585 had forced her to renounce. Alyattes, relieved from anxiety with regard to the Medes, had confined hisenergies to establishing firmly his kingdom in the regions of Asia Minorextending westwards from the Halys and the Anti-Taurus. The acquisitionof Colophon, the destruction of Smyrna, the alliance with the towns ofthe littoral, had ensured him undisputed possession of the valleys ofthe Caicus and the Hermus, but the plains of the Maeander in the south, and the mountainous districts of Mysia in the north, were not yet fullybrought under his sway. He completed the occupation of the Troad andMysia about 584, and afterwards made of the entire province an appanagefor Adramyttios, who was either his son or his brother. * * The doings of Alyattes in Troas and in Mysia are vouched for by the anecdote related by Plutarch concerning this king's relations with Pittakos. The founding of Adramyttium is attributed to him by Stephen of Byzantium, after Aristotle, who made Adramyttios the brother of Croesus. Radat gives good reasons for believing that Adramyttios was brother to Alyattes and uncle to Crosus, and the same person as Adramys, the son of Sadyattes, according to Xanthus of Lydia. Radet gives the year 584 for the date of these events. He even carried his arms into Bithynia, where, to enforce his rule, hebuilt several strongholds, one of which, called Alyatta, commandedthe main road leading from the basin of the Rhyndacus to that ofthe Sangarius, skirting the spurs of Olympus. * He experienced somedifficulty in reducing Caria, and did not finally succeed in his effortstill nearly the close of his reign in 566. Adramyttios was then dead, and his fief had devolved on his eldest surviving brother or nephew, Crosus, whose mother was by birth a Carian. This prince had incurredhis father's displeasure by his prodigality, and an influential partydesired that he should be set aside in favour of his brother Pantaleon, the son of Alyattes by an Ionian. Croesus, having sown his wild oats, was anxious to regain his father's favour, and his only chance of sodoing was by distinguishing himself in the coming war, if only moneycould be found for paying his mercenaries. Sadyattes, the richest bankerin Lydia, who had already had dealings with all the members of the royalfamily, refused to make him a loan, but Theokharides of Priźnź advancedhim a thousand gold staters, which enabled Crosus to enroll hiscontingent at Bphesus, and to be the first to present himself at therallying-place for the troops. ** * Radet places the operations in Bithynia before the Median war, towards 594 at the latest. I think that they are more probably connected with those in Mysia, and that they form part of the various measures taken after the Median war to achieve the occupation of the regions west of the Halys. ** A mutilated extract from Xanthus of Lydia in Suidas seems to carry these events back to the time of the war against Priźnź, towards the beginning of the reign. The united evidence of the accompanying circumstances proves that they belong to the time of the old age of Alyattes, and makes it very likely that they occurred in 566, the date proposed by Radet for the Carian campaign. Caria was annexed to the kingdom, but the conditions under which theannexation took place are not known to us;* and Croesus contributed soconsiderably to the success of the campaign, that he was reinstated inpopular favour. Alyattes, however, was advancing in years, and was soonabout to rejoin his adversaries Cyaxares and Nebuchadrezzar in Hades. Like the Pharaohs, the kings of Lydia were accustomed to constructduring their lifetime the monuments in which they were to repose afterdeath. Their necropolis was situated not far from Sardes, on the shoresof the little lake Gygaea; it was here, close to the resting-place ofhis ancestors and their wives, that Alyattes chose the spot for histomb, ** and his subjects did not lose the opportunity of proving to whatextent he had gained their affections. * The fragment of Nicolas of Damascus does not speak of the result of the war, but it was certainly favourable, for Herodotus counts the Carians among Croesus' subjects. ** The only one of these monuments, besides that of Alyattes, which is mentioned by the ancients, belonged to one of the favourites of Gyges, and was called _the Tomb of the Courtesan_. Strabo, by a manifest error, has applied this name _to_ the tomb of Alyattes. [Illustration: 050. Jpg THE TUMULUS OF ALYATTES AND THE ENTRANCE TO THEPASSAGE] Drawn by Boudier, from the sketch by Spiegolthal. His predecessors had been obliged to finish their work at their ownexpense and by forced labour;* but in the case of Alyattes the threewealthiest classes of the population, the merchants, the craftsmen, andthe courtesans, all united to erect for him an enormous tumulus, theremains of which still rise 220 feet above the plains of the Hermus. * This, at least, seems to be the import of the passage in Clearchus ofSoli, where that historian gives an account of the erection of the _Tombof the Courtesan_. [Illustration: 051. Jpg ONE OF THE LYDIAN ORNAMENTS IN THE LOUVRE] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph. The sub-structure consisted of a circular wall of great blocks oflimestone resting on the solid rock, and it contained in the centrea vault of grey marble which was reached by a vaulted passage. A hugemound of red clay and yellowish earth was raised above the chamber, surmounted by a small column representing a phallus, and by four stelęcovered with inscriptions, erected at the four cardinal points. Itfollows the traditional type of burial-places in use among the oldAsianic races, but it is constructed with greater regularity than mostof them; Alyattes was laid within it in 561, after a glorious reign offorty-nine years. * * Herodotus gave fifty-seven years' length of reign to Alyattes, whilst the chronographers, who go back as far as Xanthus of Lydia, through Julius Africanus, attribute to him only forty-nine; historians now prefer the latter figures, at least as representing the maximum length of reign. [Illustration: 052. Jpg MOULD FOR JEWELLERY OF LYDIAN ORIGIN] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph. It was wholly due to him that Lydia was for the moment raised to thelevel of the most powerful states which then existed on the easternshores of the Mediterranean. He was by nature of a violent anduncontrolled temper, and during his earlier years he gave way to fits ofanger, in which he would rend the clothes of those who came in his wayor would spit in their faces, but with advancing years his characterbecame more softened, and he finally earned the reputation of being ajust and moderate sovereign. The little that we know of his life revealsan energy and steadfastness of purpose quite unusual; he proceededslowly but surely in his undertakings, and if he did not succeed inextending his domains as far as he had hoped at the beginning of hiscampaigns against the Medes, he at all events never lost any of theprovinces he had acquired. Under his auspices agriculture flourished, and manufactures attained a degree of perfection hitherto unknown. [Illustration: 053. Jpg A LYDIAN FUNERY COUCH] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Choisy. None of the vases in gold, silver, or wrought-iron, which he dedicatedand placed among the treasures of the Greek temples, has come down tous, but at rare intervals ornaments of admirable workmanship are foundin the Lydian tombs. Those now in the Louvre exhibit, in addition tohuman figures somewhat awkwardly treated, heads of rams, bulls, andgriffins of a singular delicacy and faithfulness to nature. Theseexamples reveal a blending of Grecian types and methods of productionwith those of Egypt or Chaldęa, the Hellenic being predominant, * andthe same combination of heterogeneous elements must have existed in theother domains of industrial art---in the dyed and embroidered stuffs, **the vases, *** and the furniture. **** * The ornaments, of which we have now no specimens, but only the original moulds cut in serpentine, betray imitation of Assyria and Chaldęa. ** The custom of clothing themselves in dyed and embroidered stuffs was one of the effeminate habits with which the poet Xenophanes reproached the Ionians as having been learned from their Lydian neighbours. *** M. Perrot points out that one of the vases discovered by G. Dennis at Bintépé is an evident imitation of the Egyptian and Phoenician chevroned glasses. The shape of the vase is one of those found represented, with the same decoration, on Egyptian monuments subsequent to the Middle Empire, where the chevroned lines seem to be derived from the undulations of ribbon-alabaster. **** The stone funerary couches which have been discovered in Lydian tombs are evidently copied from pieces of wooden furniture similarly arranged and decorated. [Illustration: 054a. Jpg LYDIAN COIN BEARING A RUNNING FOX] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a specimen in the Cabinet des Médailles: a stater of electrum weighing 14. 19 grammes. [These illustrations are larger than the original pieces. --Tr. ] [Illustration: 054b. Jpg LYDIAN COIN WITH A HARE] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the _Cabinet des Médailles. _ Lydia, inheriting the traditions of Phrygia, and like that statesituated on the border of two worlds, allied moreover with Egypt as wellas Babylon, and in regular communication with the Delta, borrowed fromeach that which fell in with her tastes or seemed likely to be mosthelpful to her in her commercial relations. As the country producedgold in considerable quantities, and received still more from extraneoussources, the precious metal came soon to be employed as a means ofexchange under other conditions than those which had hitherto prevailed. Besides acting as commission agents and middle-men for the disposalof merchandise at Sardes, Ephesus, Miletus, Clazomenaa, and all themaritime cities, the Lydians performed at the same time the functionsof pawnbrokers, money-changers, and bankers, and they were ready tomake loans to private individuals as well as to kings. Obliged by theexigencies of their trade to cut up the large gold ingots into sectionssufficiently small to represent the smallest values required in dailylife, they did not at first impress upon these portions any stamp asa guarantee of the exact weight or the purity of the metal; they wereestimated like the _tabonu_ of the Egyptians, by actual weighing on theoccasion of each business transaction. [Illustration: 055. Jpg LYDIAN COINS WITH A LION AND LION'S HEAD] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des Médailles. The idea at length occurred to them to impress each of these pieces witha common stamp, serving, like the trade-marks employed by certain guildsof artisans, to testify at once to their genuineness and their exactweight: in a word, they were the inventors of money. The most ancientcoinage of their mint was like a flattened sphere, more or less ovoid, in form: it consisted at first of electrum, and afterwards of smeltedgold, upon which parallel striae or shallow creases were made by ahammer. There were two kinds of coinage, differing considerably fromeach other; one consisted of the heavy stater, weighing about 14. 20grammes, perhaps of Phoenician origin, the other of the light stater, ofsome 10. 80 grammes in weight, which doubtless served as money forthe local needs of Lydia: both forms were subdivided into piecesrepresenting respectively the third, the sixth, the twelfth, and thetwenty-fourth of the value of the original. [Illustration: 056a. Jpg COIN BEARING HEAD OF MOUFLON GOAT] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des Médailles. [Illustration: 056b. Jpg MONEY OF CROESUS] The stamp which came to be impressed upon the money was in relief, andvaried with the banker; * when political communities began to follow theexample of individuals, it also bore the name of the city where it wasminted. * [The best English numismatists do not agree with M. Babelon's "banker" theory. Cf. Barclay V. Head, _Historia Nummorum_, p. Xxxiv. ---Tr. ] The type of impression once selected, was little modified for fear ofexciting mistrust among the people, but it was more finely executed andenlarged so as to cover one of the faces, that which we now call the_obverse_. Several subjects entered into the composition of the design, each being impressed by a special punch: thus in the central concavitywe find the figure of a running fox, emblem of Apollo Bassareus, andin two similar depressions, one above and the other below the central, appear a horse's or stag's head, and a flower with four petals. Lateron the design was simplified, and contained only one, or at most twofigures--a hare squatting under a tortuous climbing plant, a roaringlion crouching with its head turned to the left, the grinning muzzle ofa lion, the horned profile of an antelope or mouflon sheep: rosettes andflowers, included within a square depression, were then used to replacethe stria and irregular lines of the reverse. These first efforts werewithout inscriptions; it was not long, however, before there came to beused, in addition to the figures, legends, from which we sometimeslearn the name of the banker; we read, for instance, "I am the mark ofPhannes, " on a stater of electrum struck at Ephesus, with a stag grazingon the right. We are ignorant as to which of the Lydian kings first madeuse of the new invention, and so threw into circulation the gold andelectrum which filled his treasury to overflowing. The ancients say itwas Gyges, but the Gygads of their time cannot be ascribed to him; theywere, without any doubt, simply ingots marked with the stamp of thebanker of the time, and were attributed to Gyges either out of pureimagination or by mistake. * * The gold of Gyges is known to us through a passage in Pollux. Fr. Lenormant attributed to Gyges the coins which Babelon restores to the banks of Asia Minor. Babelon sees in the Gygads only "ingots of gold, struck _possibly_ in the name of Gyges, capable of being used as coin, doubtless representing a definitely fixed weight, but still lacking that ultimate perfection which characterises the coinage of civilised peoples: from the standpoint of circulation in the market their shape was defective and inconvenient; their subdivision did not extend to such small fractions as to make all payments easy; they were too large and too dear for easy circulation through many hands. " The same must be said of the pieces of money which have been assignedto his successors, and, even when we find on them traces of writing, wecannot be sure of their identification; one legend which was consideredto contain the name of Sadyattes has been made out, without producingconviction, as involving, instead, that of Clazomenę. There is nocertainty until after the time of Alyattes, that is, in the reign ofCroesus. It is, as a fact, to this prince that we owe the fine gold andsilver coins bearing on the obverse a demi-lion couchant confrontinga bull treated similarly. * The two creatures appear to threaten oneanother, and the introduction of the lion recalls a tradition regardingthe city of Sardes; it may represent the actual animal which was allegedto have been begotten by King Meles of one of his concubines, and whichhe caused to be carried solemnly round the city walls to render themimpregnable. Croesus did not succeed to the throne of his father without trouble. Hisenemies had not laid down their arms after the Carian campaign, and theyendeavoured to rid themselves of him by all the means in use at Orientalcourts. The Ionian mother of his rival furnished the slave who kneadedthe bread with poison, telling her to mix it with the dough, but thewoman revealed the intended crime to her master, who at once took thenecessary measures to frustrate the plot; later on in life he dedicatedin the temple of Delphi a statue of gold representing the faithfulbread-maker. ** The chief of the rival party seems to have beenSadyattes, the banker from whom Croesus had endeavoured to borrow moneyat the beginning of his career, but several of the Lydian nobles, whoseexercise of feudal rights had been restricted by the growing authorityof the Mermnado, either secretly or openly gave their adhesion toPantaleon, among them being Glaucias of Sidźnź; the Greek cities, alwaysready to chafe at authority, were naturally inclined to support aclaimant born of a Greek mother, and Pindarus the tyrant of Ephesus, andgrandson of the Melas who had married the daughter of Gyges, joined theconspirators. * Lenormant ascribed an issue of coins without inscriptions to the kings Ardys, Sadyattes, and Alyattes, but this has since been believed not to have been their work. ** Herodotus mentions the statue of the bread-maker, giving no reason why Crosus dedicated it. The author quoted by Plutarch would have it that in revenge he made his half- brothers eat the poisoned bread. [Illustration: 059. Jpg VIEW OF THE SITE AND RUINS OF EPHESUS] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph. As soon as Alyattes was dead, Crosus, who was kept informed by his spiesof their plans, took action with a rapidity which disconcerted hisadversaries. It is not known what became of Pantaleon, whether he wasexecuted or fled the country, but his friends were tortured to death orhad to purchase their pardon dearly. Sadyattes was stretched on a rackand torn with carding combs. * Glaucias, besieged in his fortress ofSidźnź, opened its gates after a desperate resistance; the kingdemolished the walls, and pronounced a solemn curse on those who shouldthereafter rebuild them. Pindarus, summoned to surrender, refused, butas he had not sufficient troops to defend the entire city, he evacuatedthe lower quarters, and concentrated all his forces on the defence ofthe citadel; he refused to open negotiations until after the fall of atower at the moment when a practicable breach had been made, andsucceeded in obtaining an honourable capitulation for himself and hispeople by a ruse. * The history of Sadyattes and of his part in the conspiracy results from points of agreement which have been established between various passages in Herodotus and in Nicolas of Damascus, where the person is sometimes named and sometimes not. He dedicated the town to Artemis, and by means of a rope connectedthe city walls with the temple, which stood nearly a mile away inthe suburbs, and then entreated for peace in the name of the goddess. Croesus was amused at the artifice, and granted favourable conditions tothe inhabitants, but insisted on the expulsion of the tyrant. The latterbowed before the decree, and confiding the care of his children andpossessions to his friend Pasicles, left for the Peloponnesus with hisretinue. Bphesus up to this time had been a kind of allied principality, whose chiefs, united to the royal family of Lydia by marriages fromgeneration to generation, recognised the nominal suzerainty of thereigning king rather than his effective authority. It was in facta species of protectorate, which, while furthering the commercialinterests of Lydia, satisfied at the same time the passion of the Greekcities for autonomy. Croesus, encouraged by his first success, couldnot rest contented with such a compromise. He attacked, successively, Miletus and the various Ionian, Ęolian, and Dorian communities ofthe littoral, and brought them all under his sway, promising on theircapitulation that their local constitutions should be respected if theybecame direct dependencies of his empire. He placed garrisons in suchtowns as were strategically important for him to occupy, but everywhereelse he razed to the ground the fortresses and ramparts which mightafford protection to his enemies in case of rebellion, compelling theinhabitants to take up their abode on the open plain where they couldnot readily defend themselves. * The administration of the affairs ofeach city was entrusted to either a wealthy citizen, or an hereditarytyrant, or an elected magistrate, who was held responsible for itsloyalty; the administrator paid over the tribute to the sovereign'streasurers, levied the specified contingent and took command of it intime of war, settled any quarrels which might occur, and was empowered, when necessary, to exile turbulent and ambitious persons whose wordsor actions appeared to him to be suspicious. Croesus treated withgenerosity those republics which tendered him loyal obedience, andaffected a special devotion to their gods. He gave a large number ofex-voto offerings to the much-revered sanctuary of Bran-chidse, in theterritory of Miletus; he dedicated some golden heifers at the Artemisionof Ephesus, and erected the greater number of the columns of that templeat his own expense. ** * He treated thus the Ephesians and the Ilians. ** The fragments of columns brought from this temple by Wood and preserved in the British Museum have on one of the bases the remains of an inscription confirming the testimony of Herodotus. At one time in his career he appears to have contemplated extending hisdominion over the Greek islands, and planned, as was said, the equipmentof a fleet, but he soon acknowledged the imprudence of such a project, and confined his efforts to strengthening his advantageous position onthe littoral by contracting alliances with the island populations andwith the nations of Greece proper. * * He seems to have been deterred from his project by a sarcastic remark made, as some say, by Pittakos the Mitylenian, or according to others, by Bias of Priźnź. Following the diplomacy of his ancestors, he began by devoting himselfto the gods of the country, and took every pains to gain the good gracesof Apollo of Delphi. He dispensed his gifts with such liberality thatneither his contemporaries nor subsequent generations grew wearyof admiring it. On one occasion he is said to have sacrificed threethousand animals, and burnt, moreover, on the pyre the costly contentsof a palace--couches covered with silver and gold, coverlets and robesof purple, and golden vials. His subjects were commanded to contributeto the offering, and he caused one hundred and seventeen hollowhalf-bricks to be cast of the gold which they brought him for thispurpose. These bricks were placed in regular layers within the treasuryat Delphi where the gifts of Lydia from the time of Alyattes weredeposited, and the top of the pile was surmounted by a lion of finegold of such a size that the pedestal and statue together were worth£1, 200, 000 of our present money. These, however, formed only a tithe ofhis gifts; many of the objects dedicated by him were dispersed half acentury (548 B. C. ) later when the temple was burnt, and found theirway into the treasuries of the Greek states which enjoyed the favourof Apollo--among them being an enormous gold cup sent to Clazomeme, andfour barrels of silver and two bowls, one of silver and one of gold, sent to the Corinthians. The people at Delphi, as well as their god, participated in the royal largesse, and Croesus distributed to themthe sum of two staters per head. No doubt their gratitude led them bydegrees to exaggerate the total of the benefits showered upon them, especially as time went on and their recollection of the king becamefainter; but even when we reduce the number of the many gifts whichthey attributed to him, we are still obliged to acknowledge that theysurpassed anything hitherto recorded, and that they produced throughoutthe whole of Greece the effect that Croesus had desired. The oraclegranted to him and to the Lydians the rights of citizenship inperpetuity, the privilege of priority in consulting it before allcomers, precedence for his legates over other foreign embassies, and aplace of honour at the games and at all religious ceremonies. It was, in fact, the admission of Lydia into the Hellenic concert, and theofferings which Croesus showered upon the sanctuaries of lesserfame--that of Zeus at Dodona, of Amphiaraos at Oropos, of Trophonios atLebadsea, on the oracle of Abee in Phocis, and on the Ismenian Apolloat Thebes--secured a general approval of the act. Political alliancescontracted with the great families of Athens, the Alcmonidę andEupatridę, * with the Cypselidę of, Corinth, ** and with the Heraclidę ofSparta, *** completed the policy of bribery which Croesus had inauguratedin the sacerdotal republics, with the result that, towards 548, being inthe position of uncontested patron of the Greeks of Asia, he could countupon the sympathetic neutrality of the majority of their compatriots inEurope, and on the effective support of a smaller number of them inthe event of his being forced into hostilities with one or other of hisAsiatic rivals. * Traditions as to Crcesus' relations with Alcrnseon are preserved by Herodotus. The king compelled the inhabitants of Lampsacus, his vassals, to release the elder Miltiades, whom they had taken prisoner, and thus earned the gratitude of the Eupatridę. ** Alyattes had been the ally of Periander, as is proved by an anecdote in Herodotus. This friendship continued under Crosus, for after the fall of the monarchy, when the special treasuries of Lydia were suppressed, the ex-voto offerings of the Lydian kings were deposited in the treasury of Corinth. *** According to Theopompus, the Lacedaemonians, wishing to gild the face of the statue of the Amyclsean, Apollo, and finding no gold in Greece, consulted the Delphian prophetess: by her advice they sent to Lydia to buy the precious metal from Croesus. This, however, constituted merely one side of his policy, and thenegotiations which he carried on with his western neighbours wereconducted simultaneously with his wars against those of the east. Alyattes had asserted his supremacy over the whole of the country on thewestern side of the Halys, but it was of a very vague kind, having nodefinite form, and devoid of practical results as far as several of thedistricts in the interior were concerned. Croesus made it a reality, andin less than ten years all the peoples contained within it, the Lyciansexcepted--Mysians, Phrygians, Mariandynians, Paphlagonians, Thynians, Bithynians, and Pamphylians--had rendered him homage. In itsconstitution his empire in no way differed from those which at that timeshared the rule of Western Asia; the number of districts administereddirectly by the sovereign were inconsiderable, and most of the statescomprised in it preserved their autonomy. Phrygia had its own princes, who were descendants of Midas, * and in the same way Caria and Mysiaalso retained theirs; but these vassal lords paid tribute and furnishedcontingents to their liege of Sardes, and garrisons lodged in theircitadels as well as military stations or towns founded in strategicpositions, such as Prusa** in Bithynia, Cibyra, Hyda, Grimenothyrę, andTemenothyrę, *** kept strict watch over them, securing the while freecirculation for caravans or individual merchants throughout the wholecountry. Croesus had achieved his conquest just as Media was totteringto its fall under the attacks of the Persians. * This is proved by the history of the Prince Adrastus in Herodotus. Herodotus probably alluded to this colonisation by Crcesus, when he said that the Mysians of Olympus were descendants of Lydian colonists. ** Strabo merely says that the Kibyrates were descended from the Lydians who dwelt in Cabalia; since Croesus was, as far as we know, the only Lydian king who ever possessed this part of Asia, Radet, with good reason, concludes that Kibyra was colonised by him. *** Radet has given good reasons for believing that at least some of these towns were enlarged and fortified by Croesus. Their victory placed the Lydian king in a position of great perplexity, since it annulled the treaties concluded after the eclipse of 585, andby releasing him from the obligations then contracted, afforded him anopportunity of extending the limits within which his father had confinedhimself. Now or never was the time for crossing the Halys in order toseize those mineral districts with which his subjects had so long hadcommercial relations; on the other hand, the unexpected energy of whichthe Persians had just given proof, their bravery, their desire forconquest, and the valour of their leader, all tended to deter him fromthe project: should he be victorious, Cyrus would probably not restcontented with tke annexation of a few unimportant districts or theimposition of a tribute, but would treat his adversary as he hadAstyages, and having dethroned him, would divide Lydia into departmentsto be ruled by one or other of his partisans. Warlike ideas, nevertheless, prevailed at the court of Sardes, and, taking all intoconsideration, we cannot deny that they had reason on their side. Thefall of Ecbatana had sealed the fate of Media proper, and its immediatedependencies had naturally shared the fortunes of the capital; but themore distant provinces still wavered, and they would probably attemptto take advantage of the change of rule to regain their liberty. Cyrus, obliged to take up arms against them, would no longer have his entireforces at his disposal, and by attacking him at that juncture it mightbe possible to check his power before it became irresistible. Havingsketched out his plan of campaign, Croesus prepared to execute it withall possible celerity. Egypt and Chaldęa, like himself, doubtless feltthemselves menaced; he experienced little difficulty in persuading themto act in concert with him in face of the common peril, and he obtainedfrom both Amasis and Nabonidus promises of effective co-operation. Atthe same time he had recourse to the Greek oracles, and that ofDelphi was instrumental in obtaining for him a treaty of alliance andfriendship with Sparta. Negotiations had been carried on so rapidly, that by the end of 548 all was in readiness for a simultaneous movement;Sparta was equipping a fleet, and merely awaited the return of thefavourable season to embark her contingent; Egypt had already despatchedhers, and her Cypriot vassals were on the point of starting, while bandsof Thracian infantry were marching to reinforce the Lydian army. Thesevarious elements represented so considerable a force of men, that, hadthey been ranged on a field of battle, Cyrus would have experiencedconsiderable difficulty in overcoming them. An unforeseen act oftreachery obliged the Lydians to hasten their preparations and commencehostilities before the moment agreed on. Eurybatos, an Ephesian, to whomthe king had entrusted large sums of money for the purpose of raisingmercenaries in the Peloponnesus, fled with his gold into Persia, andbetrayed the secret of the coalition. The Achaemenian sovereign did nothesitate to forestall the attack, and promptly assumed the offensive. The transport of an army from Ecbatana to the middle course of theHalys would have been a long and laborious undertaking, even had it keptwithin the territory of the empire; it would have necessitated crossingthe mountain groups of Armenia at their greatest width, and that at atime when the snow was still lying deep upon the ground and the torrentswere swollen and unfordable. The most direct route, which passed throughAssyria and the part of Mesopotamia south of the Masios, lay for themost part in the hands of the Chaldęans, but their enfeebled conditionjustified Cyrus's choice of it, and he resolved, in the event of theirresistance, to cut his way through sword in hand. He therefore boredown upon Arbela by the gorges of Rowandīz in the month Nisan, making asthough he were bound for Karduniash; but before the Babylonians had timeto recover from their alarm at this movement, he crossed the river notfar from Nineveh and struck into Mesopotamia. He probably skirted theslopes of the Masios, overcoming and killing in the month Iyyārsome petty king, probably the ruler of Armenia, * and debouched intoCappadocia. This province was almost entirely in the power of the enemy;Nabonidus had despatched couriers by the shortest route in order to warnhis ally, and if necessary to claim his promised help. * Ploigl, who was the first to refer a certain passage in the _Annals of Nabonidus_ to the expedition against Croesus, restored Is[parda] as the name of the country mentioned, and saw even the capture of Sardes in the events of the month Iyyār, in direct contradiction to the Greek tradition. The connection between the campaign beyond the Tigris and the Lydian war seems to me incontestable, but the Babylonian chronicler has merely recorded the events which affected Babylonia. Cyrus' object was both to intimidate Nabonidus and also to secure possession of the most direct, and at the same time the easiest, route: by cutting across Mesopotamia, he avoided the difficult marches in the mountainous districts of Armenia. Perhaps we should combine, with the information of the _Annals_, the passage of Xenophon, where it is said that the Armenians refused tribute and service to the King of Persia: Cyrus would have punished the rebels on his way, after crossing the Euphrates. Croesus, when he received them, had with him only the smaller portion ofhis army, the Lydian cavalry, the contingents of his Asiatic subjects, and a few Greek veterans, and it would probably have been wiser to deferthe attack till after the disembarkation of the Lacedaemonians; buthesitation at so critical a moment might have discouraged his followers, and decided his fate before any action had taken place. He thereforecollected his troops together, fell upon the right bank of the Halys, *devastated the country, occupied Pteria and the neighbouring towns, and exiled the inhabitants to a distance. He had just completed thesubjection of the White Syrians when he was met by an emissary from thePersians; Cyrus offered him his life, and confirmed his authority oncondition of his pleading for mercy and taking the oath of vassalage. **Croesus sent a proud refusal, which was followed by a brilliantvictory, after which a truce of three months was concluded between thebelligerents. *** * On this point Herodotus tells a current story of his time: Thaļes had a trench dug behind the army, which was probably encamped in one of the bends made by the Halys; he then diverted the stream into this new bed, with the result that the Lydians found themselves on the right bank of the river without having had the trouble of crossing it. ** Nicolas of Damascus records that Cyrus, after the capture of Sardes, for a short time contemplated making Croesus a vassal king, or at least a satrap of Lydia. *** We have two very different accounts of this campaign, viz. That of Herodotus, and that of Polyonus. According to Herodotus, Croesus gave battle only once in Pteria, with indecisive result, and on the next day quietly retired to his kingdom, thinking that Cyrus would not dare to pursue him. According to Polyonus, Croesus, victorious in a first engagement owing to a more or less plausible military stratagem, consented to a truce, but on the day after was completely defeated, and obliged to return to his kingdom with a routed army. Herodotus' account of the fall of Croesus and of Sardes, borrowed partly from a good written source, Xanthus or Charon of Lampsacus, partly from the tradition of the Harpagidse, seems to have for its object the soothing of the vanity both of the Persians and of the Lydians, since, if the result of the war could not be contested, the issue of the battle was at least left uncertain. If he has given a faithful account, no one can understand why Croesus should have retired and ceded White Syria to a rival who had never conquered him. The account given by Polysenus, in spite of the improbability of some of its details, comes from a well-informed author: the defeat of the Lydians in the second battle explains the retreat of Crcesus, who is without excuse in Herodotus' version of the affair. Pompeius Trogus adopted a version similar to that of Polysenus. Cyrus employed the respite in attempting to win over the Greek citiesof the littoral, which he pictured to himself as nursing a bitterhatred against the Mermnadę; but it is to be doubted if his emissariessucceeded even in wresting a declaration of neutrality from theMilesians; the remainder, Ionians and Ęolians, all continued faithfulto their oaths. * On the resumption of hostilities, the tide of fortuneturned, and the Lydians were crushed by the superior forces of thePersians and the Medes; Crcesus retired under cover of night, burningthe country as he retreated, to prevent the enemy from following him, and crossed the Halys with the remains of his battalions. The season wasalready far advanced; he thought that the Persians, threatened in therear by the Babylonian troops, would shrink from the prospect of awinter campaign, and he fell back upon Sardes without further lingeringin Phrygia. But Nabonidus did not feel himself called upon to show thesame devotion that his ally had evinced towards him, or perhaps thepriests who governed in his name did not permit him to fulfil hisengagements. ** * Herodotus makes the attempted corruption of the Ionians to date from the beginning of the war, even before Cyrus took the field. ** The author followed by Pompeius Trogus has alone preserved the record of this treaty. The fact is important as explaining Croesus' behaviour after his defeat, but Schubert goes too far when he re-establishes on this ground an actual campaign of Cyrus against Babylon: Radet has come back to the right view in seeing only a treaty made with Nabonidus. As soon as peace was proposed, he accepted terms, without onceconsidering the danger to which the Lydians were exposed by hisdefection. The Persian king raised his camp as soon as all fear of anattack to rearward was removed, and, falling upon defenceless Phrygia, pushed forward to Sardes in spite of the inclemency of the season. Nomovement could have been better planned, or have produced suchstartling results. Croesus had disbanded the greater part of his feudalcontingents, and had kept only his body-guard about him, the remainderof his army--natives, mercenaries, and allies--having received ordersnot to reassemble till the following spring. The king hastily calledtogether all his available troops, both Lydians and foreigners, and confronted his enemies for the second time. Even under theseunfavourable conditions he hoped to gain the advantage, had his cavalry, the finest in the world, been able to take part in the engagement. ButCyrus had placed in front of his lines a detachment of camels, and thesmell of these animals so frightened the Lydian horses that they snortedand refused to charge. * * Herodotus' mention of the use of camels is confirmed, with various readings, by Xenophon, by Polysenus, and by Ęlian; their employment does not necessarily belong to a legendary form of the story, especially if we suppose that the camel, unknown before in Asia Minor, was first introduced there by the Persian army. The site of the battle is not precisely known. According to Herodotus, the fight took place in the great plain before Sardes, which is crossed by several small tributaries of the Hermus, amongst others the Hyllus. Radet recognises that the Hyllus of Herodotus is the whole or part of the stream now called the Kusu-tchaī, and he places the scene of action near the township of Adala, which would correspond with Xenophon's Thymbrara. This continues to be the most likely hypothesis. After the battle Croesus would have fled along the Hermus towards Sardes. Xenophon's story is a pure romance. Croesus was again worsted on the confines of the plain of the Hermus, and taking refuge in the citadel of Sardes, he despatched couriers tohis allies in Greece and Egypt to beg for succour without delay. TheLacedaemonians hurried on the mobilisation of their troops, and theirvessels were on the point of weighing anchor, when the news arrivedthat Sardes had fallen in the early days of December, and that Croesushimself was a prisoner. * How the town came to be taken, the Greeksthemselves never knew, and their chroniclers have given severaldifferent accounts of the event. ** * Radet gives the date of the capture of Sardes as about November 15, 546; but the number and importance of the events occurring between the retreat of Croesus and the decisive catastrophe--the negotiations with Babylon, the settling into winter quarters, the march of Cyrus across Phrygia--must have required a longer time than Radet allots to them in his hypothesis, and I make the date a month later. ** Ctesias and Xenophon seem to depend on Herodotus, the former with additional fabulous details concerning his OEbaras, Cyrus' counsellor, which show the probable origin of his additions. Polysenus had at his disposal a different story, the same probably that he used for his account of the campaign in Cappadocia, for in it can be recognised the wish to satisfy, within possible limits, the pride of the Lydians: here again the decisive success is preceded by a check given to Cyrus and a three months' truce. The least improbable is that found in Herodotus. The blockade hadlasted, so he tells us, fourteen days, when Cyrus announced that hewould richly reward the first man to scale the walls. Many were temptedby his promises, but were unsuccessful in their efforts, and theirfailure had discouraged all further attempts, when a Mardian soldier, named Hyreades, on duty at the foot of the steep slopes overlooking theTmolus, saw a Lydian descend from rock to rock in search of his helmetwhich he had lost, and regain the city by the same way without any greatdifficulty. He noted carefully the exact spot, and in company with a fewcomrades climbed up till he reached the ramparts; others followed, andtaking the besieged unawares, they opened the gates to the main body ofthe army. * * About three and a half centuries later Sardes was captured in the same way by one of the generals of Antiochus the Great. Croesus could not bear to survive the downfall of his kingdom: heerected a funeral pyre in the courtyard of his palace, and took up hisposition on it, together with his wives, his daughters, and the noblestyouths of his court, surrounded by his most precious possessions. He could cite the example of more than one vanquished monarch of theancient Asiatic world in choosing such an end, and one of the fabulousancestors of his race, Sandon-Herakles, had perished after this fashionin the midst of the flames. Was the sacrifice carried out? Everythingleads us to believe that it was, but popular feeling could not beresigned to the idea that a prince who had shown such liberality towardsthe gods in his prosperity should be abandoned by them in the timeof his direst need. They came to believe that the Lydian monarch hadexpiated by his own defeat the crime by the help of which his ancestorGyges had usurped the throne. Apollo had endeavoured to delay thepunishment till the next generation, that it might fall on the son ofhis votary, but he had succeeded in obtaining from fate a respite ofthree years only. Even then he had not despaired, and had warned Croesusby the voice of the oracles. They had foretold him that, in crossing theHalys, the Lydians ^would destroy a great empire, and that their powerwould last till the day when a mule should sit upon the throne of Media. Croesus, blinded by fate, could not see that Cyrus, who was of mixedrace, Persian by his father and Median by his mother, was the predictedmule. He therefore crossed the Halys, and a great empire fell, but itwas his own. At all events, the god might have desired to show that tohonour his altars and adorn his temple was in itself, after all, thebest of treasures. "When Sardes, suffering the vengeance of Zeus, wasconquered by the army of the Persians, the god of the golden sword, Apollo, was the guardian of Croesus. When the day of despair arrived, the king could not resign himself to tears and servitude; within thebrazen-walled court he erected a funeral pyre, on which, together withhis chaste spouse and his bitterly lamenting daughters of beautifullocks, he mounted; he raised his hands towards the depths of the etherand cried: 'Proud fate, where is the gratitude of the gods, where is theprince, the child of Leto? Where is now the house of Alyattes?... Theancient citadel of Sardes has fallen, the Pactolus of golden wavesruns red with blood; ignominiously are the women driven from theirwell-decked chambers! That which was once my hated foe is now my friend, and the sweetest thing is to die!' Thus he spoke, and ordered the softlymoving eunuch* to set fire to the wooden structure. * The word translated "softly moving eunuch" is here perhaps a proper name: the slave whose duty it was to kindle the pyre was called Abrobatas in the version of the story chosen by Bacchylides, while that adopted by the potter whose work is reproduced on the opposite page, calls him Euthymos. The maidens shrieked and threw their arms around their mother, for thedeath before them was that most hated by mortals. But just when thesparkling fury of the cruel fire had spread around, Zeus, calling up ablack-flanked cloud, extinguished the yellow flame. Nothing is incredible of that which the will of the gods has decreed:Apollo of Delos, seizing the old man, bore him, together with hisdaughters of tender feet, into the Hyperborean land as a reward forhis piety, for no mortal had sent richer offerings to the illustriousPythō!" [Illustration: 075. Jpg CIMESUS ON HIS PYRE] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph of the original in the Museum of the Louvre. This miraculous ending delighted the poets and inspired many finelines, but history could with difficulty accommodate itself to such amaterialistic intervention of a divine being, and sought a lessfabulous solution. The legend which appeared most probable to the worthyHerodotus did not even admit that the Lydian king took his own life;it was Cyrus who condemned him, either with a view of devoting thefirst-fruits of his victory to the immortals, or to test whether theimmortals would save the rival whose piety had been so frequently heldup to his admiration. The edges of the pyre had already taken light, when the Lydian king sighed and thrice repeated the name of Solon. Itwas a tardy recollection of a conversation in which the Athenian sagehad stated, without being believed, that none can be accounted trulyhappy while they still live. Cyrus, applying it to himself, was seizedwith remorse or pity, and commanded the bystanders to quench the fire, but their efforts were in vain. Thereupon Croesus implored the pity ofApollo, and suddenly the sky, which up till then had been serene andclear, became overcast; thick clouds collected, and rain fell soheavily that the burning pile was at once extinguished. * * The story told by Nicolas of Damascus comes down probably from Xanthus of Lydia, but with many additions borrowed directly from Herodotus and rhetorical developments by the author himself. Most other writers who tell the story depend for their information, either directly or indirectly, on Herodotus: in later times it was supposed that the Lydian king was preserved from the flames by the use of some talisman such as the Ephesian letters. Well treated by his conqueror, the Lydian king is said to have becomehis friend and most loyal counsellor; he accepted from him the fief ofBarźnź in Media, often accompanied him in his campaigns, and on morethan one occasion was of great service to him by the wise advice whichhe gave. We may well ask what would have taken place had he gained the decisivevictory over Cyrus that he hoped. Chaldęa possessed merely the semblanceof her former greatness and power, and if she still maintained her holdover Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, and parts of Arabia, it was becausethese provinces, impoverished by the Assyrian conquest, and entirelylaid waste by the Scythians, had lost the most energetic elementsof their populations, and felt themselves too much enfeebled torise against their suzerain. Egypt, like Chaldęa, was in a state ofdecadence, and even though her Pharaohs attempted to compensate for theinferiority of their native troops by employing foreign mercenaries, their attempts at Asiatic rule always issued in defeat, and just as theBabylonian sovereigns were unable to reduce them to servitude, so theyon their part were powerless to gain an advantage over the sovereigns ofBabylon. Hence Lydia, in her youth and vigour, would have found littledifficulty in gaining the ascendency over her two recent allies, butbeyond that she could not hope to push her success; her restrictedterritory, sparse population, and outlying position would always havedebarred her from exercising any durable dominion over them, and thoughabsolute mistress of Asia Minor, the countries beyond the Taurus werealways destined to elude her grasp. If the Achęmenian, therefore, hadconfined himself, at all events for the time being, to the ancientlimits of his kingdom, Egypt and Chaldęa would have continued tovegetate each within their respective area, and the triumph of Croesuswould, on the whole, have caused but little change in the actual balanceof power in the East. The downfall of Croesus, on the contrary, marked a decisive era in theworld's history. His army was the only one, from the point of numbersand organisation, which was a match for that of Cyrus, and from the dayof its dispersion it was evident that neither Egypt nor Chaldęa had anychance of victory on the battle-field. The subjection of Babylon andHarrān, of Hamath, Damascus, Tyre and Sidon, of Memphis and Thebes, nowbecame merely a question of time, and that not far distant; the whole ofAsia, and that part of Africa which had been the oldest cradle of humancivilisation, were now to pass into the hands of one man and form asingle empire, for the benefit of the new race which was issuing forthin irresistible strength from the recesses of the Iranian table-land. Itwas destined, from the very outset, to come into conflict with anolder, but no less vigorous race than itself, that of the Greeks, whosecolonists, after having swarmed along the coasts of the Mediterranean, were now beginning to quit the seaboard and penetrate wherever theycould into the interior. [Illustration: 078. Jpg A PERSIAN KING FIGHTING WITH GREEKS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an intaglio reproduced in the _Antiquités du Bosphore cimmérien. _ They had been on friendly terms with that dynasty of the Meramadęwho had shown reverence for the Hellenic gods; they had, as a whole, disdained to betray Croesus, or to turn upon him when he was indifficulties beyond the Halys; and now that he had succumbed to hisfate, they considered that the ties which had bound them to Sardes werebroken, and they were determined to preserve their independence at allcosts. This spirit of insubordination would have to be promptly dealtwith and tightly curbed, if perpetual troubles in the future were tobe avoided. The Asianic peoples soon rallied round their newmaster--Phrygians, Mysians, the inhabitants on the shores of the BlackSea, and those of the Pamphylian coast;* even Cilicia, which had heldits own against Chaldęa, Media, and Lydia, was now brought under therising power, and its kings were henceforward obedient to the Persianrule. ** * None of the documents actually say this, but the general tenor of Herodotus' account seems to show clearly that, with the exception of the Greek cities of the Carians and Lycians, all the peoples who had formed part of the Lydian dominion under Croesus submitted, without any appreciable resistance, after the taking of Sardes. ** Herodotus mentions a second Syennesis king of Cilicia forty years later at the time of the Ionian revolt. The two leagues of the Ionians and Ęolians had at first offered torecognise Cyrus as their suzerain under the same conditions as thosewith which Croesus had been satisfied; but he had consented to acceptit only in the case of Miletus, and had demanded from the rest anunconditional surrender. This they had refused, and, uniting in a commoncause perhaps for the first time in their existence, they had resolvedto take up arms. As the Persians possessed no fleet, the Creeks hadnothing to fear from the side of the Ęgean, and the severity of thewinter prevented any attack being made from the land side till thefollowing spring. They meanwhile sought the aid of their mother-country, and despatched an embassy to the Spartans; the latter did not considerit prudent to lend them troops, as they would have done in the case ofCroesus, but they authorised Lakrines, one of their principal citizens, to demand of the great king that he should respect the Hellenic cities, under pain of incurring their enmity. [Illustration: 080. Jpg THE PRESENT SITE OF MILETUS] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph. Cyrus was fully occupied with the events then taking place in theeastern regions of Iran; Babylon had not ventured upon any move afterhaving learned the news of the fall of Sardes, but the Bactrians and theSakę had been in open revolt during the whole of the year that he hadbeen detained in the extreme west, and a still longer absence might riskthe loss of his prestige in Media, and even in Persia itself. * * The tradition followed by Ctesias maintained that the submission of the eastern peoples was an accomplished fact when the Lydian war began. That adopted by Herodotus placed this event after the fall of Croesus; at any rate, it showed that fear of the Bactrians and the Sakę, as well as of the Babylonians and Egyptians was the cause that hastened Cyrus' retreat. The threat of the Lacedaęmonians had little effect upon him; heinquired as to what Sparta and Greece were, and having been informed, he ironically begged the Lacedęmonian envoy to thank his compatriots forthe good advice with which they had honoured him; "but, " he added, "takecare that I do not soon cause you to babble, not of the ills of theIonians, but of your own. " He confided the government of Sardes to oneof his officers, named Tabalos, and having entrusted Paktyas, one of theLydians who had embraced his cause, with the removal of the treasuresof Croesus to Persia, he hastily set out for Ecbatana. He had scarcelyaccomplished half of his journey when a revolt broke out in his rear;Paktyas, instead of obeying his instructions, intrigued with theIonians, and, with the mercenaries he had hired from them, besiegedTabalos in the citadel of Sardes. If the place capitulated, the entireconquest would have to be repeated; fortunately it held out, andits resistance gave Cyrus time to send its governor reinforcements, commanded by Mazares the Median. As soon as they approached the city, Paktyas, conscious that he had lost the day, took refuge at Kymź. Itsinhabitants, on being summoned to deliver him up, refused, but helpedhim to escape to Mytilene, where the inhabitants of the island attemptedto sell him to the enemy for a large sum of money. The Kymęans saved hima second time, and conveyed him to the temple of Athene Poliarchosat Chios. The citizens, however, dragged him from his retreat, anddelivered him over to the Median general in exchange for Atarneus, adistrict of Mysia, the possession of which they were disputing with theLesbians. * Paktyas being a prisoner, the Lydians were soon recalledto order, and Mazares was able to devote his entire energies to thereduction of the Greek cities; but he had accomplished merely the sackof Priźnź, ** and the devastation of the suburbs of Magnesia on theęander, when he died from some illness. * A passage which has been preserved of Charon of Lampsacus sums up in a few words the account given by Herodotus of the adventures of Paktyas, but without mentioning the treachery of the islanders: he confines himself to saying Cyrus caught the fugitive after the latter had successively left Chios and Mytilene. ** Herodotus attributes the taking of this city to the Persian Tabules, who is evidently the Tabalos of Herodotus. The Median Harpagus, to whom tradition assigns so curious a part asregards Astyages and the infant Cyrus, succeeded him as governor of theancient Lydian kingdom, and completed the work which he had begun. The first two places to be besieged were Phocęa and Teos, but theirinhabitants preferred exile to slavery; the Phocęans sailed away tofound Marseilles in the western regions of the Mediterranean, andthe people of Teos settled along the coast of Thracia, near to thegold-mines of the Pangseus, and there built Abdera on the site of anancient Clazomenian colony. The other Greek towns were either taken byassault or voluntarily opened their gates, so that ere long both Ioniansand Ęolians were, with the exception of the Samians, under Persian rule. The very position of the latter rendered them safe from attack; withouta fleet they could not be approached, and the only people who could havefurnished Cyrus with vessels were the Phoenicians, who were not as yetunder his power. The rebellion having been suppressed in this quarter, Harpagus made a descent into Caria; the natives hastened to placethemselves under the Persian yoke, and the Dorian colonies scatteredalong the coast, Halicarnas-sus, Cnidos, and the islands of Cos andRhodes, followed their examples, but Lycia refused to yield without astruggle. [Illustration: 083. Jpg A LYCIAN CITY UPON ITS INACCESSIBLE ROCK] The rock and tombs of Tlōs, drawn by Boudier, from the view in Fellows. Its steep mountain chains, its sequestered valleys, its towns andfortresses perched on inaccessible rocks, all rendered it easy for theinhabitants to carry on a successful petty warfare against the enemy. The inhabitants of Xanthos, although very inferior in numbers, issueddown into the plain and disputed the victory with the invaders for aconsiderable time; at length their defeat and the capitulation of theirtown induced the remainder of the Lycians to lay down arms, and broughtabout the final pacification of the peninsula. It was parcelled out intoseveral governorships, according to its ethnographical affinities;as for instance, the governorship of Lydia, that of Ionia, that ofPhrygia, * and others whose names are unknown to us. Harpągus appearedto have resided at Sardes, and exercised vice-regal functions over thevarious districts, but he obtained from the king an extensive propertyin Lycia and in Caria, which subsequently caused these two provinces tobe regarded as an appanage of his family. * Herodotus calls a certain Mitrobates satrap of Daskylion; he had perhaps been already given this office by Cyrus. Orcetes had been made governor of Ionia and Lydia by Cyrus. While thus consolidating his first conquest, Cyrus penetrated into theunknown regions of the far East. Nothing would have been easier for himthan to have fallen upon Babylon and overthrown, as it were by the way, the decadent rule of Nabonidus; but the formidable aspect which theempire still presented, in spite of its enfeebled condition, must havedeceived him, and he was unwilling to come into conflict with it untilhe had made a final reckoning with the restless and unsettled peoplesbetween the Caspian and the slopes on the Indian side of the table-landof Iran. As far as we are able to judge, they were for the most part ofIranian extraction, and had the same religion, institutions, and customsas the Medes and Persians. Tradition had already referred the origin ofZoroaster, and the scene of his preaching, to Bactriana, that land ofheroes whose exploits formed the theme of Persian epic song. It is notknown, as we have already had occasion to remark, by what ties it wasbound to the empire of Cyaxares, nor indeed if it ever had been actuallyattached to it. We do not possess, unfortunately, more than almostworthless scraps of information on this part of the reign of Cyrus, perhaps the most important period of it, since then, for the firsttime, peoples who had been hitherto strangers to the Asiatic world werebrought within its influence. If Ctesias is to be credited, Bactrianawas one of the first districts to be conquered. Its inhabitants wereregarded as being among the bravest of the East, and furnished the bestsoldiers. They at first obtained some successes, but laid down arms onhearing that Cyrus had married a daughter of Astyages. * This traditionwas prevalent at a time when the Achaemenians were putting forward thetheory that they, and Cyrus before them, were the legitimate successorsof the old Median sovereigns; they welcomed every legend which tended tojustify their pretensions, and this particular one was certain to pleasethem, since it attributed the submission of Bactriana not to a meredisplay of brute force, but to the recognition of an hereditary right. The annexation of this province entailed, as a matter of course, thatof Margiana, of the Khoramnians, ** and of Sogdiana. Cyrus constructedfortresses in all these districts, the most celebrated being thatof Kyropolis, which commanded one of the principal fords of theIaxartes. *** * This is the campaign which Ctesias places before the Lydian war, but which Herodotus relegates to a date after the capture of Sardes. ** Ctesias must have spoken of the submission of these peoples, for a few words of a description which he gave of the Khoramnians have been preserved to us. *** Tomaschek identifies Kyra or Kyropolis with the present Ura-Tepe, but distinguishes it from the Kyreskhata of Ptolemy, to which he assigns a site near Usgent. The steppes of Siberia arrested his course on the north, but to theeast, in the mountains of Chinese Turkestan, the Sakas, who wererenowned for their wealth and bravery, did not escape his ambitiousdesigns. The account which has come down to us of his campaigns againstthem is a mere romance of love and adventure, in which real historyplays a very small part. He is said to have attacked and defeatedthem at the first onset, taking their King Amorges prisoner; but thiscapture, which Cyrus considered a decisive advantage, was supposed tohave turned the tide of fortune against him. Sparźthra, the wife ofAmorges, rallied the fugitives round her, defeated the invaders inseveral engagements, and took so many of their men captive, that theywere glad to restore her husband to her in exchange for the prisonersshe had made. The struggle finally ended, however, in the subjection ofthe Sakae; they engaged to pay tribute, and thenceforward constitutedthe advance-guard of the Iranians against the Nomads of the East. Cyrus, before quitting their neighbourhood, again ascended the table-land, andreduced Ariana, Thatagus, Harauvati, Zaranka, and the country of Cabul;and we may well ask if he found leisure to turn southwards beyond LakeHamun and reach the shores of the Indian Ocean. One tradition, of littleweight, relates that, like Alexander at a later date, he lost his armyin the arid deserts of Gedrosia; the one fact that remains is that theconquest of Gedrosia was achieved, but the details of it are lost. Theperiod covered by his campaigns was from five to six years, from 545 to539, but Cyrus returned from these expeditions into the unknown only toplan fresh undertakings. There remained nothing now to hinder him frommarching against the Chaldęans, and the discord prevailing at Babylonadded to his chance of success. Nabonidus's passion for archęologyhad in no way lessened since the opening of his reign. The templerestorations prompted by it absorbed the bulk of his revenues. He madeexcavations in the sub-structures of the most ancient sanctuaries, such as Larsam, Uruk, Uru, Sippar, and Nipur; and when his digging wasrewarded by the discovery of cylinders placed there by his predecessors, his delight knew no bounds. Such finds constituted the great events ofhis life, in comparison with which the political revolutions of Asiaand Africa diminished in importance day by day. It is difficult to tellwhether this indifference to the weighty affairs of government was ascomplete as it appears to us at this distance of time. Certain factsrecorded in the official chronicles of that date go to prove that, except in name and external pomp, the king was a nonentity. The realpower lay in the hands of the nobles and generals, and Bel-sharuzur, theking's son, directed affairs for them in his father's name. Nabonidusmeanwhile resided in a state of inactivity at his palace of Tima, and itis possible that his condition may have really been that of a prisoner, for he never left Tima to go to Babylon, even on the days of greatfestivals, and his absence prevented the celebration of the higherrites of the national religion, with the procession of Bel and itsaccompanying ceremonies, for several consecutive years. The peoplesuffered from these quarrels in high places; not only the nativeBabylonians or Kaldā, who were thus deprived of their accustomedspectacles, and whose piety was scandalised by these dissensions, butalso the foreign races dispersed over Mesopotamia, from the confluenceof the Khabur to the mouths of the Euphrates. Too widely scattered ortoo weak to make an open declaration of their independence, their hopesand their apprehensions were alternately raised by the various reportsof hostilities which reached their ears. The news of the firstvictories of the Persians aroused in the exiled Jews the idea of speedydeliverance, and Cyrus clearly appeared to them as the hero chosen byJahveh to reinstate them in the country, of their forefathers. The number of the Jewish exiles, which perhaps at first had not exceeded20, 000* had largely increased in the half-century of their captivity, and even if numerically they were of no great importance, their socialcondition entitled them to be considered as the _élite_ of all Israel. * The body of exiles of 597 consisted of ten thousand persons, of whom seven thousand belonged to the wealthy, and one thousand to the artisan class, while the remainder consisted of people attached to the court (2 Kings xxiv. 14- 16). In the body of 587 are reckoned three thousand and twenty-three inhabitants of Judah, and eight hundred and thirty-two dwellers in Jerusalem. But the body of exiles of 581 numbers only seven hundred and forty-five persons (Jer. Lii. 30). These numbers are sufficiently moderate to be possibly exact, but they are far from being certain. There had at first been the two kings, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, theirfamilies, the aristocracy of Judah, the priests and pontiff of thetemple, the prophets, the most skilled of the artisan class and thesoldiery. Though distributed over Babylon and the neighbouring cities, we know from authentic sources of only one of their settlements, thatof Tell-Abīb on the Chebar* though many of the Jewish colonies whichflourished thereabouts in Roman times could undoubtedly trace theirorigin to the days of the captivity; one legend found in the Talmudaffirmed that the synagogue of Shafyāthīb, near Nehardaa, had been builtby King Jehoiachin with stones brought from the ruins of the temple atJerusalem. These communities enjoyed a fairly complete autonomy, andwere free to administer their own affairs as they pleased, provided thatthey paid their tribute or performed their appointed labours withoutcomplaint. The shźkhs, or elders of the family or tribe, who had playedso important a part in their native land, still held their respectivepositions; the Chaldęans had permitted them to retain all thepossessions which they had been able to bring with them into exile, andrecognised them as the rulers of their people, who were responsible totheir conquerors for the obedience of those under them, leaving thementire liberty to exercise their authority so long as they maintainedorder and tranquillity among their subordinates. ** * Ezek. Iii. 15. The Chebar or Kebar has been erroneously identified with the Khabur; cuneiform documents show that it was one of the canals near Nipur. ** Cf. The assemblies of these chiefs at the house of Ezekiel and their action (viii. 1; xiv. 1; xx. 1). How the latter existed, and what industries they pursued in order toearn their daily bread, no writer of the time has left on record. Therich plain of the Euphrates differed so widely from the soil to whichthey had been accustomed in the land of Judah, with its bare or sparselywooded hills, slopes cultivated in terraces, narrow and ill-wateredwadys, and tortuous and parched valleys, that they must have feltthemselves much out of their element in their Chaldęan surroundings. They had all of them, however, whether artisans, labourers, soldiers, gold-workers, or merchants, to earn their living, and they succeeded indoing so, following meanwhile the advice of Jeremiah, by taking everyprecaution that the seed of Israel should not be diminished. * Theimagination of pious writers of a later date delighted to represent theexiled Jews as giving way to apathy and vain regrets: "By the rivers ofBabylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. Uponthe willows in the midst thereof we hanged up our harps. For therethey that led us captive required of us songs, and they that wastedus required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. Howshall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"** * Jer. Xxix. 1-7. ** Ps. Cxxxvii. 1-4. This was true of the priests and scribes only. A blank had been made intheir existence from the moment when the conqueror had dragged themfrom the routine of daily rites which their duties in the temple serviceentailed upon them. The hours which had been formerly devoted to theiroffices were now expended in bewailing the misfortunes of their nation, in accusing themselves and others, and in demanding what crime hadmerited this punishment, and why Jahveh, who had so often shown clemencyto their forefathers, had not extended His forgiveness to them. Itwas, however, by the long-suffering of God that His prophets, andparticularly Ezekiel, were allowed to make known to them the true causeof their downfall. The more Ezekiel in his retreat meditated upontheir lot, the more did the past appear to him as a lamentable conflictbetween divine justice and Jewish iniquity. At the time of their sojournin Egypt, Jahveh had taken the house of Jacob under His protection, and in consideration of His help had merely demanded of them that theyshould be faithful to Him. "Cast ye away every man the abominations ofhis eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt: I am theLord your God. " The children of Israel, however, had never observed thiseasy condition, and this was the root of their ills; even beforethey were liberated from the yoke of Pharaoh, they had betrayed theirProtector, and He had thought to punish them: "But I wrought for Myname's sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, among whom they were, in whose sight I made myself known unto them.... So I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt, and brought theminto the wilderness. And I gave them My statutes, and showed them Myjudgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them. Moreover also Igave them My sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them... But the houseof Israel rebelled against Me. " As they had acted in Egypt, so theyacted at the foot of Sinai, and again Jahveh could not bring Himself todestroy them; He confined Himself to decreeing that none of those whohad offended Him should enter the Promised Land, and He extended Hisgoodness to their children. But these again showed themselves nowiser than their fathers; scarcely had they taken possession of theinheritance which had fallen to them, "a land flowing with milk andhoney... The glory of all lands, " than when they beheld "every high hilland every thick tree... They offered there their sacrifices, and therethey presented the provocation of their offering, there also they madetheir sweet savour, and they poured out there their drink offerings. "Not contented with profaning their altars by impious ceremonies andofferings, they further bowed the knee to idols, thinking in theirhearts, "We will be as the nations, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone. " "As I live, saith the Lord God, surely with amighty hand and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, willI be King over you. "* 1 Ezek. Xx. However just the punishment, Bzekiel did not believe that it would lastfor ever. The righteousness of God would not permit future generationsto be held responsible for ever for the sins of generations past andpresent. "What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land ofIsrael, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children'steeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not haveoccasion to use this proverb any more in Israel! Behold, all souls areMine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine;the soul that sinneth it shall die. But if a man be just... He shallsurely live, saith the Lord God. " Israel, therefore, was master of hisown destiny. If he persisted in erring from the right way, the hourof salvation was still further removed from him; if he repented andobserved the law, the Divine anger would be turned away. "Therefore... Ohouse of Israel... Cast away from you all your transgressions whereinye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit; for whywill ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the deathof him that dieth... Wherefore turn yourselves and live. " 1 There werethose who objected that it was too late to dream of regeneration and ofhope in the future: "Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost; we areclean cut off. " The prophet replied that the Lord had carried him in thespirit and set him down in the midst of a plain strewn with bones. "SoI prophesied... And as I prophesied there was a noise... And the bonescame together, bone to his bone. And I beheld, and lo, there were sinewsupon them, and flesh came up and skin covered them above; but there wasno breath in them. Then said (the Lord) unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God: Comefrom the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that theymay live. So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came intothem and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding greatarmy. Then He said unto me... These bones are the whole house ofIsrael.... Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come upout of your graves, O my people; and I will bring you into the land ofIsrael.... And I will put My Spirit in you and ye shall live, and Iwill place you in your own land; and ye shall know that I the Lord hathspoken it and performed it, saith the Lord. " A people raised from such depths would require a constitution, a new lawto take the place of the old, from the day when the exile should cease. Ezekiel would willingly have dispensed with the monarchy, as it had beentried since the time of Samuel with scarcely any good results. For everyHezekiah or Josiah, how many kings of the type of Ahaz or Manasseh hadthere been! The Jews were nevertheless still so sincerely attached tothe house of David, that the prophet judged it inopportune to excludeit from his plan for their future government. He resolved to toleratea king, but a king of greater piety and with less liberty than thecompiler of the Book of Deuteronomy had pictured to himself, a servantof the servants of God, whose principal function should be to providethe means of worship. Indeed, the Lord Himself was the only Sovereignwhom the prophet fully accepted, though his concept of Him differedgreatly from that of his predecessors: from that, for instance, ofAmos--the Lord God who would do nothing without revealing "His secretunto His servants the prophets;" or of Hosea--who desired "mercy, andnot sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. "The Jahveh of Ezekiel no longer admitted any intercourse with theinterpreters of His will. He held "the son of man" at a distance, andwould consent to communicate with him only by means of angels who wereHis messengers. The love of His people was, indeed, acceptable toHim, but He preferred their reverence and fear, and the smell of thesacrifice offered according to the law was pleasing to His nostrils. Thefirst care of the returning exiles, therefore, would be to build Hima house upon the holy mountain. Ezekiel called to mind the templeof Solomon, in which the far-off years of his youth were spent, andmentally rebuilt it on the same plan, but larger and more beautiful;first the outer court, then the inner court and its chambers, and lastlythe sanctuary, the dimensions of which he calculates with scrupulouscare: "And the breadth of the entrance was ten cubits; and the sidesof the entrance were five cubits on the one side and five cubits on theother side: and he measured the length thereof, forty cubits; andthe breadth, twenty cubits"--and so forth, with a wealth of technicaldetails often difficult to be understood. And as a building so wellproportioned should be served by a priesthood worthy of it, the sonsof Zadok only were to bear the sacerdotal office, for they alone hadpreserved their faith unshaken; the other Lévites were to fill merelysecondary posts, for not only had they shared in the sins of the nation, but they had shown a bad example in practising idolatry. The duties andprerogatives of each one, the tithes and offerings, the sacrifices, thesolemn festivals, the preparation of the feasts, --all was foreseen andprearranged with scrupulous exactitude. Ezekiel was, as we have seen, apriest; the smallest details were as dear to him as the noblest officesof his calling, and the minute ceremonial instructions as to the killingand cooking of the sacrificial animals appeared to him as necessary tothe future prosperity of his people as the moral law. Towards the end, however, the imagination of the seer soared above the formalism of thesacrificing priest; he saw in a vision waters issuing out of the verythreshold of the divine house, flowing towards the Dead Sea through aforest of fruit trees, "whose leaf shall not wither, neither shall thefruit thereof fail. " The twelve tribes of Israel, alike those of whoma remnant still existed as well as those which at different timeshad become extinct, were to divide the regenerated land by lot amongthem--Dan in the extreme north, Reuben and Judah in the south; and theywould unite to found once more, around Mount Sion, that new Jerusalemwhose name henceforth was to be Jahveh-shammah, "The Lord is there. "* * Ezek. Xlvii. , xlviii. The image of the river seems to be borrowed from the _vessel of water_ of Chaldęan mythology. The influence of Ezekiel does not seem to have extended beyond arestricted circle of admirers. Untouched by his preaching, many of theexiles still persisted in their worship of the heathen gods; most ofthese probably became merged in the bulk of the Chaldęan population, and were lost, as far as Israel was concerned, as completely as werethe earlier exiles of Ephraim under Tiglath-pileser III. And Sargon. Thegreater number of the Jews, however, remained faithful to their hopes offuture greatness, and applied themselves to discerning in passing eventsthe premonitory signs of deliverance. "Like as a woman with child, thatdraweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in herpangs; so have we been before Thee, O Lord.... Come, my people, enterthou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself fora little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, theLord cometh forth out of His place to punish the inhabitants of theearth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, andshall no more cover her slain. "* The condition of the people improvedafter the death of Nebuchadrezzar. Amil-marduk took Jehoiachin out ofthe prison in which he had languished for thirty years, and treatedhim with honour:** this was not as yet the restoration that had beenpromised, but it was the end of the persecution. * An anonymous prophet, about 570, in Isa. Xxvi. 17, 20, 21. ** 2 Kings xxv. 27-30; cf. Jer. Lii. 31-34. A period of court intrigues followed, during which the sceptre ofNebuchadrezzar changed hands four times in less than seven years; thencame the accession of the peaceful and devout Nabonidus, the fall ofAstyages, and the first victories of Cyrus. Nothing escaped the vigilanteye of the prophets, and they began to proclaim that the time was athand, then to predict the fall of Babylon, and to depict the barbariansin revolt against her, and Israel released from the yoke by theall-powerful will of the Persians. "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 the doors before him, andthe gates shall not be shut; I will go before thee and make the ruggedplaces plain: I will break in pieces the doors of brass, rend in sunderthe bars of iron: and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, andhidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I am theLord which call thee by thy name, even the God of Israel. For Jacob Myservant's sake, and Israel My chosen, I have called thee by thy name: Ihave surnamed thee, though thou hast not known Me. "* Nothing can standbefore the victorious prince whom Jahveh leads: "Bel boweth down, Nebostoopeth; their idols are upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: thethings that ye carried about are made a load, a burden to the wearybeast. They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver theburden, but themselves are gone into captivity. "** "O virgin daughterof Babylon, sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of theChaldęans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Takethe millstones and grind meal: remove thy veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers. They nakedness shall beuncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen.... Sit thou silent, and getthee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldęans: for thou shalt no morebe called the lady of kingdoms. "*** * Second Isaiah, in Isa. Xlv. 1-4. ** Second Isaiah, in Isa. Xlvi. 1, 2. *** Second Isaiah, in Isa. Xlvii. 1-5. The task which Cyrus had undertaken was not so difficult as we mightimagine. Not only was he hailed with delight by the strangers whothronged Babylonia, but the Babylonians themselves were weary of theirking, and the majority of them were ready to welcome the Persian whowould rid them of him, as in old days they hailed the Assyrian kings whodelivered them from their Chaldęan lords. It is possible that towardsthe end of his reign Nabonidus partly resumed the supreme power;* butanxious for the future, and depending but little on human help, he hadsought a more powerful aid at the hands of the gods. He had apparentlyrevived some of the old forgotten cults, and had applied to their userevenues which impoverished the endowment of the prevalent worship ofhis own time. As he felt the growing danger approach, he rememberedthose towns of secondary grade--Uru, Uruk, Larsam, and Eridu--allof which, lying outside Nebuchadrezzar's scheme of defence, would besacrificed in the case of an invasion: he had therefore brought awayfrom them the most venerated statues, those in which the spirit of thedivinity was more particularly pleased to dwell, and had shut them up inthe capital, within the security of its triple rampart. ** * This seems to follow from the part which he plays in the final crisis, as told in the _Cylinder of Cyrus_ and in the _Annals_. ** The chronicler adds that the gods of Sippar, Kutha, and Borsippa were not taken to Babylon; and indeed, these cities being included within the lines of defence of the great city, their gods were as well defended from the enemy as if they had been in Babylon itself. This attempt to concentrate the divine powers, accentuating as it didthe supremacy of Bel-Marduk over his compeers, was doubtless flatteringto his pride and that of his priests, but was ill received by the restof the sacerdotal class and by the populace. All these divine guests hadnot only to be lodged, but required to be watched over, decked, fed, andfeted, together with their respective temple retinues; and the prestigeand honour of the local Bel, as well as his revenues, were likely tosuffer in consequence. The clamour of the gods in the celestial heightssoon re-echoed throughout the land; the divinities complained of theirsojourn at Babylon as of a captivity in E-sagilla; they lamented overthe suppression of their daily sacrifices, and Marduk at length tookpity on them. He looked upon the countries of Sumir and Akkad, and sawtheir sanctuaries in ruins and their towns lifeless as corpses; "he casthis eyes over the surrounding regions; he searched them with his glanceand sought out a prince, upright, after his own heart, who should takehis hands. He proclaimed by name Cyrus, King of Anshān, and he calledhim by his name to universal sovereignty. " Alike for the peopleof Babylon and for the exiled Jew, and also doubtless for otherstranger-colonies, Cyrus appeared as a deliverer chosen by the gods;his speedy approach was everywhere expected, if not with the sameimpatience, at least with an almost joyful resignation. His plans werecarried into action in the early months of 538, and his habitual goodfortune did not forsake him at this decisive moment of his career. Theimmense citadel raised by Nebuchadrezzar in the midst of his empire, inanticipation of an attack by the Medes, was as yet intact, and the wallsrising one behind another, the moats, and the canals and marshes whichprotected it, had been so well kept up or restored since his time, thattheir security was absolutely complete; a besieging army could do littleharm--it needed a whole nation in revolt to compass its downfall. Awhole nation also was required for its defence, but the Babylonianswere not inclined to second the efforts of their sovereign. Nabonidusconcentrated his troops at the point most threatened, in the anglecomprised near Opis between the Medic wall and the bend of the Tigris, and waited in inaction the commencement of the attack. It is supposedthat Cyrus put two bodies of troops in motion: one leaving Susa underhis own command, took the usual route of all Blamite invasions in thedirection of the confluence of the Tigris and the Dīyala; the othercommanded by Gobryas, the satrap of Gutium, followed the course ofthe Adhem or the Dīyala, and brought the northern contingents to therallying-place. From what we know of the facts as a whole, it wouldappear that the besieging force chose the neighbourhood of the presentBagdad to make a breach in the fortifications. Taking advantage of themonths when the rivers were at their lowest, they drew off the waterfrom the Dīyala and the Tigris till they so reduced the level that theywere able to cross on foot; they then cut their way through the rampartson the left bank, and rapidly transported the bulk of their forcesinto the very centre of the enemy's position. The principal body of theChaldęan troops were still at Opis, cut off from the capital; Cyrusfell upon them, overcame them on the banks of the Zalzallat in the earlydays of Tammuz, urging forward Gobryas meanwhile upon Babylon itself. *On the 14th of Tammuz, Nabonidus evacuated Sippar, which at once fellinto the hands of the Persian outposts; on the 16th Gobryas enteredBabylon without striking a blow, and Nabonidus surrendered himself aprisoner. ** * For the strategic interpretation of the events of this campaign I have generally adopted the explanations of Billerbeck. Herodotus' account with regard to the river Gyndes is probably a reminiscence of alterations made in the river-courses at the time of the attack in the direction of Bagdad. ** The _Cylinder of Cyrus_, 1. 17, expressly says so: "Without combat or battle did Marduk make him enter Babylon, " The _Annals of Nabonidus_ confirm this testimony of the official account. The victorious army had received orders to avoid all excesses whichwould offend the people; they respected the property of the citizens andof the temples, placed a strong detachment around Ź-sagilla to protectit from plunder, and no armed soldier was allowed within the enclosureuntil the king' had determined on the fate of the vanquished. Cyrusarrived after a fortnight had elapsed, on the 3rd of March-esvān, andhis first act was one of clemency. He prohibited all pillage, grantedmercy to the inhabitants, and entrusted the government of the city toGobryas. Bel-sharuzur, the son of Nabonidus, remained to be dealtwith, and his energetic nature might have been the cause of seriousdifficulties had he been allowed an opportunity of rallying the lastpartisans of the dynasty around him. Gobryas set out to attack him, andon the 11th of March-esvān succeeded in surprising and slaying him. Withhim perished the last hope of the Chaldęans, and the nobles and towns, still hesitating on what course to pursue, now vied with each other intheir haste to tender submission. The means of securing their goodwill, at all events for the moment, was clearly at hand, and it was usedwithout any delay: their gods were at once restored to them. This exodusextended over nearly two months, during March-esvān and Adar, and onits termination a proclamation of six days of mourning, up to the 3rd ofNisān, was made for the death of Bel-sharuzur, and as an atonement forthe faults of Nabonidus, after which, on the 4th of Nisān, the notablesof the city were called together in the temple of Nebo to join in thelast expiatory ceremonies. Cyrus did not hesitate for a moment to actas Tiglath-pileser III. And most of the Sargonids had done; he "took thehands of Bel, " and proclaimed himself king of the country, but in orderto secure the succession, he associated his son Cambyses with himselfas King of Babylon. Mesopotamia having been restored to order, theprovinces in their turn transferred their allegiance to Persia; "thekings enthroned in their palaces, from the Upper Sea to the Lower, thoseof Syria and those who dwell in tents, brought their weighty tribute toBabylon and kissed the feet of the suzerain. " Events had followed oneanother so quickly, and had entailed so little bloodshed, that popularimagination was quite disconcerted: it could not conceive that anempire of such an extent and of so formidable an appearance should havesuccumbed almost without a battle, and three generations had not elapsedbefore an entire cycle of legends had gathered round the catastrophe. They related how Cyrus, having set out to make war, with provisions ofall kinds for his household, and especially with his usual stores ofwater from the river Choaspes, the only kind of which he deigned todrink, had reached the banks of the Gyndes. While seeking for a ford, one of the white horses consecrated to the sun sprang into the river, and being overturned by the current, was drowned before it couldbe rescued. Cyrus regarded this accident as a personal affront, andinterrupted his expedition to avenge it. He employed his army during oneentire summer in digging three hundred and sixty canals, and thus causedthe principal arm of the stream to run dry, and he did not resume hismarch upon Babylon till the following spring, when the level of thewater was low enough to permit of a woman crossing from one bank to theother without wetting her knees. The Babylonians at first attemptedto prevent the blockade of the place, but being repulsed in their_sorties_, they retired within the walls, much to Cyrus's annoyance, forthey were provisioned for several years. He therefore undertook toturn the course of the Euphrates into the Bahr-ī-Nejīf, and havingaccomplished it, he crept into the centre of the city by the dry bed ofthe river. If the Babylonians had kept proper guard, the Persians wouldprobably have been surrounded and caught like fish in a net; but on thatparticular day they were keeping one of their festivals, and continuedtheir dancing and singing till they suddenly found the streets alivewith the enemy. Babylon suffered in no way by her servitude, and far from its being asource of unhappiness to her, she actually rejoiced in it; she was ridof Nabonidus, whose sacrilegious innovations had scandalised her piety, and she possessed in Cyrus a legitimate sovereign since he had "takenthe hands of Bel. " It pleased her to believe that she had conquered hervictor rather than been conquered by him, and she accommodated herselfto her Persian dynasty after the same fashion that she had in turnaccustomed herself to Cossęan or Elamite, Ninevite or Chaldęan dynastiesin days gone by. Nothing in or around the city was changed, and sheremained what she had been since the fall of Assyria, the real capitalof the regions situated between the Mediterranean and the Zagros. Itseems that none of her subjects--whether Syrians, Tyrians, Arabs, orIdumęans--attempted to revolt against their new master, but passivelyaccepted him, and the Persian dominion extended uncontested as far asthe isthmus of Suez; Cyprus even, and such of the Phoenicians aswere still dependencies of Egypt, did homage to her without furtherhesitation. The Jews alone appeared only half satisfied, for theclemency shown by Cyrus to their oppressors disappointed their hopesand the predictions of their prophets. They had sung in anticipation ofchildren killed before their fathers' eyes, of houses pillaged, ofwomen violated, and Babylon, the glory of the empire and the beautyof Chaldęan pride, utterly destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrha whenoverthrown by Jahveh. "It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it bedwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitchtent there; neither shall shepherds make their flocks to lie down there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall befull of doleful creatures; and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrsshall dance there. And wolves shall cry in their castles, and jackals inthe pleasant palaces. "* * The table of the last kings of Ptolemy and the monuments, is given below:-- [Illustration: 105. Jpg TABLE OF THE LAST KINGS OF PTOLEMY] Cyrus, however, was seated on the throne, and the city ofNebuchadrezzar, unlike that of Sargon and Sennacherib, still continuedto play her part in the world's history. The revenge of Jerusalem hadnot been as complete as that of Samaria, and her sons had to contentthemselves with obtaining the cessation of their exile. It is impossibleto say whether they had contributed to the downfall of Nabonidusotherwise than by the fervency of their prayers, or if they had renderedCyrus some service either in the course of his preparations or duringhis short campaign. They may have contemplated taking up arms in hiscause, and have been unable to carry the project into execution owingto the rapidity with which events took place. However this may be, hedesired to reward them for their good intentions, and in the same yearas his victory, he promulgated a solemn edict, in which he granted thempermission to return to Judah and to rebuild not only their city, butthe temple of their God. The inhabitants of the places where they wereliving were charged to furnish them with silver, gold, materials, andcattle, which would be needed by those among them who should claim thebenefits of the edict; they even had restored to them, by order of theking, what remained in the Babylonian treasury of the vessels of goldand silver which had belonged to the sanctuary of Jahveh. The headsof the community received the favour granted to them from such highquarters, without any enthusiasm. Now that they were free to go, theydiscovered that they were well off at Babylon. They would have togive up their houses, their fields, their business, their habits ofindifference to politics, and brave the dangers of a caravan journey ofthree or four months' duration, finally encamping in the midst ofruins in an impoverished country, surrounded by hostile and jealousneighbours; such a prospect was not likely to find favour with many, andindeed it was only the priests, the Lévites, and the more ardent ofthe lower classes who welcomed the idea of the return with a touchingfervour. The first detachment organised their departure in 536, under the auspices of one of the princes of the royal house, namedShauash-baluzur (Sheshbazzar), a son of Jehoiachin. * It comprised only asmall number of families, and contained doubtless a few of the captivesof Nebuchadrezzar who in their childhood had seen the temple standingand had been present at its destruction. * The name which is written Sheshbazzar in the Hebrew text of the Book of Ezra (i. 9, 11; v. 14, 16) is rendered Sasabalassaros in Lucian's recension of the Septuagint, and this latter form confirms the hypothesis of Hoonacker, which is now universally accepted, that it corresponds to the Babylonian Shamash-abaluzur. It is known that Shamash becomes Shauash in Babylonian; thus Saosdukhīnos comes from Shamash-shumukīn: similarly Shamash-abaluzur has become Shauash-abaluzur. Imbert has recognised Sheshbazzar, Shauash-abaluzur in the Shenazzar mentioned in 1 Chron. Iii. 8, as being one of the sons of Jeconiah, and this identification has been accepted by several recent historians of Israel. It should be remembered that Shauash- abaluzur and Zerubbabel have long been confounded one with the other. The returning exiles at first settled in the small towns of Judah andBenjamin, and it was not until seven months after their arrival thatthey summoned courage to clear the sacred area in order to erect in itsmidst an altar of sacrifice. * * The history of this first return from captivity is summarily set forth in Ezra i. ; cf. V. 13-17; vi. 3-5, 15. Its authenticity has been denied: with regard to this point and the questions relating to Jewish history after the exile, the modifications which have been imposed on the original plan of this work have obliged me to suppress much detail in the text and the whole of the bibliography in the notes. They formed there, in the land of their fathers, a little colony, almostlost among the heathen nations of former times--Philistines, Idumasans, Moabites, Ammonites, and the settlers implanted at various times in whathad been the kingdom of Israel by the sovereigns of Assyria and Chaldęa. Grouped around the Persian governor, who alone was able to protect themfrom the hatred of their rivals, they had no hope of prospering, or evenof maintaining their position, except by exhibiting an unshaken fidelityto their deliverers. It was on this very feeling that Cyrus mainlyrelied when he granted them permission to return to their nativehills, and he was actuated as much by a far-seeing policy as from thepromptings of instinctive generosity. It was with satisfaction that hesaw in that distant province, lying on the frontier of the only enemyyet left to him in the old world, a small band, devoted perforce to hisinterests, and whose very existence depended entirely on that of hisempire. He no doubt extended the same favour to the other exiles inChaldęa who demanded it of him, but we do not know how many of themtook advantage of the occasion to return to their native countries, andthis exodus of the Jews still remains, so far as we know, a uniquefact. The administration continued the same as it had been under theChaldęans; Aramęan was still the official language in the provincialdependencies, and the only change effected was the placing of Persiansat the head of public offices, as in Asia Minor, and allowing them abody of troops to support their authority. * * The presence of Persian troops in Asia Minor is proved by the passage in Herodotus where he says that Orotes had with him 1000 Persians as his body-guard. One great state alone remained of all those who had played a prominentpart in the history of the East. This was Egypt; and the policy whichher rulers had pursued since the development of the Iranian powerapparently rendered a struggle with it inevitable. Amasis had taken partin all the coalitions which had as their object the perpetuation ofthe balance of the powers in Western Asia; he had made a treaty withCroesus, and it is possible that his contingents had fought in thebattles before Sardes; Lydia having fallen, he did all in his power toencourage Nabonidus in his resistance. As soon as he found himself faceto face with Cyrus, he understood that a collision was imminent, anddid his best in preparing to meet it. Even if Cyrus had forgotten thesupport which had been freely given to his rivals, the wealth of Egyptwas in itself sufficient to attract the Persian hordes to her frontiers. A century later, the Egyptians, looking back on the past with amelancholy retrospection, confessed that "never had the valley beenmore flourishing or happier than under Amasis; never had the rivershown itself more beneficent to the soil, nor the soil more fertilefor mankind, and the inhabitated towns might be reckoned at 20, 000 innumber. " The widespread activity exhibited under Psammetichus II. , andApries, was redoubled under the usurper, and the quarries of Turah, *Silsileh, ** Assuan, and even those of Hammamāt, were worked as in thepalmy days of the Theban dynasties. The island of Philę, whose positionjust below the cataract attracted to it the attention of the militaryengineers, was carefully fortified and a temple built upon it, thematerials of which were used later on in the masonry of the sanctuary ofPtolemaic times. Thebes exhibited a certain outburst of vitality underthe impulse given by Ankhnasnofiribri and by Shashonqu, the governor ofher palace;*** two small chapels, built in the centre of the town, stillwitness to the queen's devotion to Amon, of whom she was the priestess. Wealthy private individuals did their best to emulate their sovereign'sexample, and made for themselves at Shźkh Abd-el-Gurnah and at Assassifthose rock-hewn tombs which rival those of the best periods in theirextent and the beauty of their bas-reliefs. **** * A stele of his forty-fourth year still exists in the quarries of the Mokattam. ** According to Herodotus, it was from the quarries of Elephantine that Amasis caused to be brought the largest blocks which he used in the building of Sais. *** Her tomb still exists at Deir el-Medineh, and the sarcophagus, taken from the tomb in 1833, is now in the British Museum. **** The most important of these tombs is that of Petenit, the father of Shashonqu, who was associated with Ankhnasnofiribri in the government of Thebes. Most of the cities of the Said were in such a state of decadence that itwas no longer possible to restore to them their former prosperity, butAbydos occupied too important a place in the beliefs connected with thefuture world, and attracted too many pilgrims, to permit of its beingneglected. The whole of its ancient necropolis had been rifled bythieves during the preceding centuries, and the monuments were nearly asmuch buried by sand as in our own times. [Illustration: 111. Jpg AN OSIRIS STRETCHED FULL LENGTH ON THE GROUND] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Mariette. The monument is a statuette measuring only 15 centimetres in length; it has been reproduced to give an idea of the probable form of the statue seen by Herodotus. The dismantled fortress now known as the Shunźt ez-Zebīb served as thecemetery for the ibises of Thoth, and for the stillborn children of thesacred singing-women, while the two Memnonia of Seti and Ramses, nowabandoned by their priests, had become mere objects of respectfulcuriosity, on which devout Egyptians or passing travellers--Phoenicians, Aramęans, Cypriots, Carians, and Greeks from Ionia and the isles--cameto carve their names. * * The position occupied by the graffiti on certain portions of the walls show that in these places in the temple of Seti there was already a layer of sand varying from one to three metres in depth. Amasis confided the work of general restoration to one of the principalpersonages of his court, Pefzāāunīt, Prince of Sais, who devoted hisattention chiefly to two buildings--the great sanctuary of Osiris, whichwas put into good condition throughout, and the very ancient necropolisof Omm-el-Graab, where lay hidden the _ąlquhah_, one of the sepulchresof the god; he restored the naos, the table of offerings, the barques, and the temple furniture, and provided for the sacred patrimony by anendowment of fields, vineyards, palm groves, and revenues, so as toensure to the sanctuary offerings in perpetuity. It was a completearchitectural resurrection. The nomes of Middle Egypt, which hadsuffered considerably during the Ethiopian and Assyrian wars, hadsome chance of prosperity now that their lords were relieved from thenecessity of constantly fighting for some fresh pretender. Horu, sonof Psam-metichus, Prince of the Oleander nome, rebuilt the ancientsanctuary of Harshafaītu at Heracleopolis, and endowed it with amunificence which rivalled that of Pefzāāunīfc at Abydos. The kinghimself devoted his resources chiefly to works at Memphis and in theDelta. He founded a temple of Isis at Memphis, which Herodotusdescribed as extending over an immense area and being well worth seeing;unfortunately nothing now remains of it, nor of the recumbent colossus, sixty feet in length, which the king placed before the court of Phtah, nor of the two gigantic statues which he raised in front of the temple, one on each side of the door. [Illustration: 112. Jpg THE TWO GODDESSES OF LAW; ANI ADORING OSIRIS] THETRIAL OF THE CONSCIENCE; TOTH AND THE FEATHER OF THE LAW. Besides these architectural works, Amasis invested the funeraryceremonies of the Apis-bulls with a magnificence rarely seen beforehis time, and the official stelae which he carved to the memory ofthe animals who died in his reign exhibit a perfection of style quiteunusual. His labours at Memphis, however, were eclipsed by the admirablework which he accomplished at Sais. The propylę which he added to thetemple of Nīt "surpassed most other buildings of the same kind, asmuch by their height and extent, as by the size and quality of thematerials;" he had, moreover, embellished them by a fine colonnade, andmade an approach to them by an avenue of sphinxes. [Illustration: 113. Jpg AMASIS IN ADORATION BEFORE THE BULL APIS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken in the Louvre. In other parts of the same building were to be seen two superb obelisks, a recumbent figure similar to that at Memphis, and a monolithic naosof rose granite brought from the quarries of Elephantine. Amasis had aspecial predilection for this kind of monument. That which he erected atThmuis is nearly twenty-three feet in height, * and the Louvre containsanother example, which though smaller still excites the admiration ofthe modern visitor. ** * The exact measurements are 23 1/2 ft. In height, 12 ft. 9 ins. In width, and 10 ft. 6 ins. In depth. The naos of Saft el-Hinneh must have been smaller, but it is impossible to determine its exact dimensions. ** It measures 9 ft. 7 ins. In height, 3 ft. 1 in. In width, and 3 ft. 8 ins. [Illustration: 114. Jpg THE NAOS OF AMASIS AT THMUIS] Drawn by Boudier, from the sketch of Burton. The naos of Sais, which amazed Herodotus, was much larger than either ofthe two already mentioned, or, indeed, than any known example. Traditionstates that it took two thousand boatmen three years to convey it downfrom the first cataract. It measured nearly thirty feet high in theinterior, twenty-four feet in depth, and twelve feet in breadth; evenwhen hollowed out to contain the emblem of the god, it still weighednearly 500, 000 kilograms. It never reached its appointed place in thesanctuary. The story goes that "the architect, at the moment when themonument had been moved as far as a certain spot in the temple, heaveda sigh, oppressed with the thought of the time expended on its transportand weary of the arduous work. Amasis overheard the sigh, and taking itas an omen, he commanded that the block should be dragged no further. Others relate that one of the overseers in charge of the work wascrushed to death by the monument, and for this reason it was leftstanding on the spot, " where for centuries succeeding generations cameto contemplate it. * * The measurements given by Herodotus are so different from those of any naos as yet discovered, that I follow Kenrick in thinking that Herodotus saw the monument of Amasis lying on its side, and that he took for the height what was really the width in depth. It had been erected in the nome of Athribis, and afterwards taken to Alexandria about the Ptolemaic era; it was discovered under water in one of the ports of the town at the beginning of this century, and Drovetti, who recovered it, gave it to the Museum of the Louvre in 1825. Amasis, in devoting his revenues to such magnificent works, fully sharedthe spirit of the older Pharaohs, and his labours were nattering tothe national vanity, even though many lives were sacrificed in theiraccomplishment; but the glory which they reflected on Egypt did nothave the effect of removing the unpopularity in which Tie was personallyheld. The revolution which overthrew Apries had been provoked by thehatred of the native party towards the foreigners; he himself had beenthe instrument by which it had been accomplished, and it would have beenonly natural that, having achieved a triumph in spite of the Greeks andthe mercenaries, he should have wished to be revenged on them, and haveexpelled them from his dominions. But, as a fact, nothing of the kindtook place, and Amasis, once crowned, forgot the wrongs he had sufferedas an aspirant to the royal dignity; no sooner was he firmly seated onthe throne, than he recalled the strangers, and showed that he had onlyfriendly intentions with regard to them. His predecessors had receivedthem into favour, he, in fact, showed a perfect infatuation for them, and became as complete a Greek as it was possible for an Egyptian to be. His first care had been to make a treaty with the Dorians of Oyrene, andhe displayed so much tact in dealing with them, that they forgave himfor the skirmish of Irasa, and invited him to act as arbitrator in theirdissensions. A certain Arkesilas II. Had recently succeeded the Battoswho had defeated the Egyptian troops, but his suspicious temper hadobliged his brothers to separate themselves from him, and they hadfounded further westwards the independent city of Barca. On histhreatening to evict them, they sent a body of Libyans against him. Fighting ensued, and he was beaten close to the town of Leukon. Helost 7000 hoplites in the engagement, and the disaster aroused somuch ill-feeling against him that Laarchos, another of his brothers, strangled him. Laarchos succeeded him amid the acclamations of thesoldiery; but not long after, Eryxō and Polyarchos, the wife andbrother-in-law of his victim, surprised and assassinated him in histurn. The partisans of Laarchos then had recourse to the Pharaoh, whoshowed himself disposed to send them help; but his preparations weresuspended owing to the death of his mother. Polyarchos repaired to Egyptbefore the royal mourning was ended, and pleaded his cause with suchurgency that he won over the king to his side; he obtained the royalinvestiture for his sister's child, who was still a minor, Battos III. , the lame, and thus placed Oyrene in a sort of vassalage to the Egyptiancrown. * * Herodotus narrates these events without mentioning Amasis, and Nicolas of Damascus adopted Herodotus' account with certain modifications taken from other sources. The intervention of Amasis is mentioned only by Plutarch and by Polyaanus; but the record of it had been handed down to them by some more ancient author--perhaps by Akesandros; or perhaps, in the first instance, by Hellanicos of Lesbos, who gave a somewhat detailed account of certain points in Egyptian history. The passage of Herodotus is also found incorporated in accounts of Cyrenian origin: his informants were interested in recalling deeds which reflected glory on their country, like the defeat of Apries at Irasa, but not in the memory of events so humiliating for them as the sovereign intervention of Pharaoh only a few years after this victory. And besides, the merely pacific success which Amasis achieved was not of a nature to leave a profound mark on the Egyptian mind. It is thus easy to explain how it was that Herodotus makes no allusion to the part played by Egypt in this affair. The ties which connected the two courts were subsequently drawn closerby marriage; partly from policy and partly from a whim, Amasis espouseda Cyrenian woman named Ladikź, the daughter, according to some, ofArkesilas or of Battos, according to others, of a wealthy privateindividual named Kritobulos. * The Greeks of Europe and Asia Minor faredno less to their own satisfaction at his hand than their compatriotsin Africa; following the example of his ally Croesus, he enteredinto relations with their oracles on several occasions, and sent themmagnificent presents. The temple of Delphi having been burnt down in548, the Athenian family of the Alcmęonides undertook to rebuild it fromthe ground for the sum of three hundred talents, of which one-fourth wasto be furnished by the Delphians. When these, being too poor to paythe sum out of their own resources, made an appeal to the generosity ofother friendly powers, Amasis graciously offered them a thousand talentsof Egyptian alum, then esteemed the most precious of all others. Alumwas employed in dyeing, and was an expensive commodity in the markets ofEurope; the citizens of Delphi were all the more sensible of Pharaoh'sgenerosity, since the united Greeks of the Nile valley contributed onlytwenty _minę_ of the same mineral as their quota. Amasis erected atCyrene a statue of his wife Ladikź, and another of the goddess Neīt, gilded from head to foot, and to these he added his own portrait, probably painted on a wooden panel. ** * The very fact of the marriage is considered by Wiedemann as a pure legend, but there is nothing against its authenticity; the curious story of the relations of the woman with Amasis told by the Cyrenian commentators is the only part which need be rejected. ** The text of Herodotus can only mean a painted panel similar to those which have been found on the mummies of the Gręco-Roman era in the Fayum. He gave to Athene of Lindos two stone statues and a corselet of linenof marvellous fineness;* and Hera of Samos received two wooden statues, which a century later Herodotus found still intact. The Greeks flockedto Egypt from all quarters of the world in such considerable numbersthat the laws relating to them had to be remodelled in order to avoidconflicts with the natives. * It seems that one of these statues is that which, after being taken to Constantinople, was destroyed in a fire in 476 A. D. Fragments of the corselet still existed in the first century of our era, but inquisitive persons used to tear off pieces to see for themselves whether, as Herodotus assures us, each thread was composed of three hundred and sixty-five strands, every one visible with the naked eye. The townships founded a century earlier along the Pelusiac arm of theNile had increased still further since the time of Necho, and to theiractivity was attributable the remarkable prosperity of the surroundingregion. But the position which they occupied on the most exposed sideof Egypt was regarded as permanently endangering the security of thecountry: her liberty would be imperilled should they revolt during a warwith the neighbouring empire, and hand over the line of defence whichwas garrisoned by them to the invader. Amasis therefore dispossessedtheir inhabitants, and transferred them to Memphis and its environs. The change benefited him in two ways, for, while securing himself frompossible treason, he gained a faithful guard for himself in the event ofrisings taking place in his turbulent capital. While he thus distributedthese colonists of ancient standing to his best interests, he placedthose of quite recent date in the part of the Delta furthest removedfrom Asia, where surveillance was most easy, in the triangle, namely, lying to the west of Sais, between the Canopic branch of the Nile, themountains, and the sea-coast. The Milesians had established here sometime previously, on a canal connected with the main arm of the river, the factory of Naucratis, which long remained in obscurity, but suddenlydeveloped at the beginning of the XXVIth dynasty, when Sais became thefavourite residence of the Pharaohs. This town Amasis made over to theGreeks so that they might make it the commercial and religious centre oftheir communities in Egypt. [Illustration: 120. Jpg THE PRESENT SITE OF NAUCRATIS] Reduced by Faucher-Gudin from the plan published by Petrie. The site of the Hellenion is marked A, the modern Arab village B, the temenos of Hera and Apollo E, that of the Dioskuri F, and that of Aphrodite G. Temples already existed there, those of Apollo and Aphrodite, togetherwith all the political and religious institutions indispensable to theconstitution of an Hellenic city; but the influx of immigrants wasso large and rapid, that, after the lapse of a few years, the entireinternal organism and external aspect of the city were metamorphosed. New buildings rose from the ground with incredible speed--the littletemple of the Dioskuri, the protectors of the sailor, the temple of theSamian Hera, that of Zeus of Ęgina, and that of Athene;* ere long thegreat temenos, the Hellenion, was erected at the public expense by nineĘolian, Ionian, and Dorian towns of Asia Minor, to serve as a place ofassembly for their countrymen, as a storehouse, as a sanctuary, and, if need be, even as a refuge and fortress, so great was its area and sothick its walls. ** * The temple of Athene, the Nīt of the Saite nome, is as yet known only by an inscription in Pctrie. ** The site has been rediscovered by Petrie at the southern extremity of and almost outside the town; the walls were about 48 feet thick and 39 feet high, and the rectangular area enclosed by them could easily contain fifty thousand men. It was not possible for the constitution of Naucratis to be veryhomogeneous, when a score of different elements assisted in itscomposition. It appears to have been a compromise between theinstitutions of the Dorians and those of the Ionians. Its suprememagistrates were called timuchi, but their length of office andfunctions are alike unknown to us. The inspectors of the emporia andmarkets could be elected only by the citizens of the nine towns, and itis certain that the chief authority was not entirely in the hands eitherof the timuchi or the inspectors; perhaps each quarter of the town hadits council taken from among the oldest residents. A prytanasum was opento all comers where assemblies and banquets were held on feast-days;here were celebrated at the public expense the festivals of Dionysosand Apollo Komasos. Amasis made the city a free port, accessible at alltimes to whoever should present themselves with peaceable intent, andthe privileges which he granted naturally brought about the closing ofall the other seaports of Egypt. When a Greek ship, pursued by pirates, buffeted by storms, or disabled by an accident at sea, ran ashore atsome prohibited spot on the coast, the captain had to appear before thenearest magistrate, in order to swear that he had not violated the lawwilfully, but from the force of circumstances. If his excuse appearedreasonable, he was permitted to make his way to the mouth of the Canopicbranch of the Nile; but when the state of the wind or tide did not allowof his departure, his cargo was transferred to boats of the locality, and sent to the Hellenic settlement by the canals of the Delta. Thisprovision of the law brought prosperity to Naucratis; the whole of thecommerce of Egypt with the Greek world passed through her docks, andin a few years she became one of the wealthiest emporia of theMediterranean. The inhabitants soon overflowed the surrounding country, and covered it with villas and townships. Such merchants as refused tosubmit to the rule of their own countrymen found a home in some otherpart of the valley which suited them, and even Upper Egypt and theLibyan desert were subject to their pacific inroads. The Milesiansestablished depots in the ancient city of Abydos;* the Cypriots andLesbians, and the people of Ephesus, Chios, and Samos, were scatteredover the islands formed by the network of canals and arms of the Nile, and delighted in giving them the names of their respective countries;**Greeks of diverse origin settled themselves at Neapolis, not far fromPanopolis; and the Samians belonging to the Ęschrionian tribe penetratedas far as the Great Oasis; in fact, there was scarcely a village whereHellenic traders were not found, like the _bakals_ of to-day, sellingwine, perfumes, oil, and salted provisions to the natives, practisingusury in all its forms, and averse from no means of enriching themselvesas rapidly as possible. * In Stephen of Byzantium the name of the town is said to be derived from that of the Milesian Abydos who founded it, probably on the testimony of Aristagoras. Letronne has seen that the historian meant a factory established by the Milesians probably in the reign of Amasis, at the terminus of the route leading to the Great Oasis. ** The compiler confines himself to stating that there were in the Nile islands called Ephesus, Chios, Samos, Lesbos, Cyprus, and so on; the explanation I have given in the text accounts for this curious fact quite simply. Those who returned to their mother-country carried thitherstrange tales, which aroused the curiosity and cupidity of theirfellow-citizens; and philosophers, merchants, and soldiers alike set outfor the land of wonders in pursuit of knowledge, wealth, or adventures. Amasis, ever alert upon his Asiatic frontier, and always anxiousto strengthen himself in that quarter against a Chaldęan or Persianinvasion, welcomed them with open arms: those who remained in thecountry obtained employment about his person, while such as left it notto return, carried away with them the memory of his kindly treatment, and secured for him in Hellas alliances of which he might one daystand in need. The conduct of Amasis was politic, but it aroused theill-feeling of his subjects against him. Like the Jews under Hezekiah, the Babylonians under Nabonidus, and all other decadent races threatenedby ruin, they attributed their decline, not to their own vices, but tothe machinations of an angry god, and they looked on favours granted tostrangers as a sacrilege. Had not the Greeks brought their divinitieswith them? Did they not pervert the simple country-folk, so that theyassociated the Greek religion with that of their own country? Moneywas scarce; Amasis had been obliged to debit the rations and pay ofhis mercenaries to the accounts of the most venerated Egyptiantemples--those of Sais, Heliopolis, Bubastis, and Memphis; and eachof these institutions had to rebate so much per cent. On their annualrevenues in favour of the barbarians, and hand over to them considerablequantities of corn, cattle, poultry, stuffs, woods, perfumes, andobjects of all kinds. The priests were loud in their indignation, theecho of which still rang in the ears of the faithful some centurieslater, and the lower classes making common cause with their priests, aspirit of hatred was roused among the populace as bitter as that whichhad previously caused the downfall of Apries. As the fear of the armyprevented this feeling from manifesting itself in a revolt, it foundexpression in the secret calumnies which were circulated against theking, and misrepresented the motives of all his actions. Scores ofmalicious stories were repeated vilifying his character. It was statedthat before his accession he was much addicted to eating and drinking, but that, suffering from want of money, he had not hesitated inprocuring what he wished for by all sorts of means, the most honest ofwhich had been secret theft. When made king, he had several times givenway to intoxication to such an extent as to be incapable of attending topublic business; his ministers were then obliged to relate moral talesto him to bring him to a state of reason. Many persons having tauntedhim with his low extraction, he had caused a statue of a divinity to bemade out of a gold basin in which he was accustomed to wash his feet, and he had exposed it to the adoration of the faithful. When it had beenworshipped by them for some time, he revealed the origin of the idol, and added "that it had been with himself as with the foot-pan.... If hewere a private person formerly, yet now he had come to be their king, and so he bade them honour and reverence him. " Towards the middle andend of his reign he was as much detested as he had been beloved at theoutset. He had, notwithstanding, so effectively armed Egypt that the Persianshad not ventured to risk a collision with her immediately after theirconquest of Babylon. Cyrus had spent ten years in compassing thedownfall of Nabonidus, and, calculating that that of Amasis wouldrequire no less a period of time, he set methodically to work on theorganisation of his recently acquired territory; the cities of Phoeniciaacknowledged him as their suzerain, and furnished him with what hadhitherto been a coveted acquisition, a fleet. These preliminarieshad apparently been already accomplished, when the movements of thebarbarians suddenly made his presence in the far East imperative. Hehurried thither, and was mysteriously lost to sight (529). Traditionaccounts for his death in several ways. If Xenophon is to be credited, he died peaceably on his bed, surrounded by his children, and edifyingthose present by his wisdom and his almost superhuman resignation. * * A similar legend, but later in date, told how Cyrus, when a hundred years old, asked one day to see his friends. He was told that his son had had them all put to death: his grief at the cruelty of Cambyses caused his death in a few days. Berosus tells us that he was killed in a campaign against the Dalię;Ctesias states that, living been wounded in a skirmish with theĘerbikes, one of the savage tribes of Bactriana, he succumbed to hisinjuries three days after the engagement. According to the worthyHerodotus, he asked the hand of Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetse, inmarriage, and was refused with disdain. He declared war against her toavenge his wounded vanity, set out to fight with her beyond the Araxes, in the steppes of Turkestan, defeated the advance-guard of cavalry, and took prisoner the heir to the crown, Spargapises, who thereupon ranhimself through with his sword. "Then Tomyris collected all the forcesof her kingdom, and gave him (Cyrus) battle. " Of all the combats in whichbarbarians have engaged among themselves, I reckon this to have been thefiercest. The following, as I understand, was the manner of it:--First, the two armies stood apart and shot their arrows at each other; then, when their quivers were empty, they closed and fought hand to hand withlances and daggers; and thus they continued fighting for a lengthof time, neither choosing to give ground. At length the Massagetseprevailed. The greater part of the army of the Persians was destroyed. Search was made among the slain by order of the queen for the body ofCyrus; and when it was found, she took a skin, and, filling it full ofhuman blood, she dipped the head of Cyrus in the gore, saying, as shethus insulted the corse, "I live and have conquered thee in fight, andyet by thee am I ruined, for thou tookest my son with guile; but thus Imake good my threat, and give thee thy fill of blood. " The engagementwas not as serious as the legend would have us believe, and the growthof the Persian power was in no way affected, by it. It cost Cyrus hislife, but his army experienced no serious disaster, and his men tookthe king's body and brought it to Pasargadę. He had a palace there, theremains of which can still be seen on the plain of Murgāb. The edificewas unpretentious, built upon a rectangular plan, with two porches offour columns on the longer sides, a lateral chamber at each of the fourangles, and a hypostyle hall in the centre, divided lengthways by tworows of columns which supported the roof. The walls were decorated withbas-reliefs, and wherever the inscriptions have not been destroyed, we can read in cuneiform characters in the three languages whichthenceforward formed the official means of communication of theempire--Persian, Medic, and Chaldęan--the name, title, and family ofthe royal occupant. Cyrus himself is represented in a standing postureon the pilasters, wearing a costume in which Egyptian and Assyrianfeatures are curiously combined. He is clothed from neck to ankle in theclose-fitting fringed tunic of the Babylonian and Mnevite sovereigns;his feet are covered with laced boots, while four great wings, emblemsof the supreme power, overshadow his shoulders and loins, two of themraised in the air, the others pointing to the earth; he wears onhis head the Egyptian skull-cap, from which rises one of the mostcomplicated head-dresses of the royal wardrobe of the Pharaohs. Themonarch raises his right hand with the gesture of a man speaking to anassembled people, and as if repeating the legend traced above his image:"I am Cyrus, the king, the Achęmenian. " He was buried not far off, inthe monumental tomb which he had probably built for himself in a squareenclosure, having a portico on three of its sides; a small chamber, with a ridge roof, rises from a base composed of six receding steps, soarranged as to appear of unequal height. [Illustration: 128. Jpg CYRUS THE ACHAEMENIAN] Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph by Dieulafoy. The doorway is narrow, and so low that a man of medium statue finds somedifficulty in entering. It is surmounted by a hollow moulding, quiteEgyptian in style, and was closed by a two-leaved stone door. Thegolden coffin rested on a couch of the same metal, covered with preciousstuffs; and a circular table, laden with drinking-vessels and ornamentsenriched with precious stones, completed the furniture of the chamber. The body of the conqueror remained undisturbed on this spot for twocenturies under the care of the priests; but while Alexander was wagingwar on the Indian frontier, the Greek officers, to whom he had entrustedthe government of Persia proper, allowed themselves to be tempted by theenormous wealth which the funerary chapel was supposed to contain. [Illustration: 129. Jpg THE TOMB OP CYRUS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the heliogravure of Dieulafoy. They opened the coffin, broke the couch and the table, and finding themtoo heavy to carry away easily, they contented themselves with stealingthe drinking-vessels and jewels. Alexander on his return visited theplace, and caused the entrance to be closed with a slight wall ofmasonry; he intended to restore the monument to its former splendour, but he himself perished shortly after, and what remained of thecontents probably soon disappeared. After the death of Cyrus, popularimagination, drawing on the inexhaustible materials furnished by hisadventurous career, seemed to delight in making him the ideal of alla monarch should be; they attributed to him every virtue--gentleness, bravery, moderation, justice, and wisdom. There is no reason to doubtthat he possessed the qualities of a good general--activity, energy, andcourage, together with the astuteness and the duplicity so necessary tosuccess in Asiatic conquest--but he does not appear to have possessed inthe same degree the gifts of a great administrator. He made no changesin the system of government which from the time of Tiglath-pileser III. Onwards had obtained among all Oriental sovereigns; he placed satrapsover the towns and countries of recent acquisition, at Sardes andBabylon, in Syria and Palestine, but without clearly defining theirfunctions or subjecting them to a supervision sufficiently strict toensure the faithful performance of their duties. He believed that he wasdestined to found a single empire in which all the ancient empires wereto be merged, and he all but carried his task to a successful close:Egypt alone remained to be conquered when he passed away. His wife Kassandanź, a daughter of Pharnaspes, and an Achęmenian likehimself, had borne him five children; two sons, Cambyses* and Smerdis, **and three daughters, Atossa, Roxana, and Artystonź. *** * The Persian form of the name rendered Kambyses by the Greeks was Kābuzīyā or Kambuzīya. Herodotus calls him the son of Kassandanź, and the tradition which he has preserved is certainly authentic. Ctesias has erroneously stated that his mother was Amytis, the daughter of Astyages, and Dinon, also erroneously, the Egyptian women Nitźtis; Diodorus Siculus and Strabo make him the son of Meroź. ** The original form was Bardiya or Barzīya, "the laudable, " and the first Greek transcript known, in Ęschylus, is Mardos, or, in the scholiasts on the passage, Merdias, which has been corrupted into Marphios by Hellanikos and into Merges by Pompeius Trogus. The form Smerdis in Herodotus, and in the historians who follow him, is the result of a mistaken assimilation of the Persian name with the purely Greek one of Smerdis or Smerdies. *** Herodotus says that Atossa was the daughter of Kassandanź, and the position which she held during three reigns shows that she must have been so; Justi, however, calls her the daughter of Amytis. A second daughter is mentioned by Herodotus, the one whom Cambyses killed in Egypt by a kick; he gives her no name, but she is probably the same as the Roxana who according to Ctesias bore a headless child. The youngest, Artystonź, was the favourite wife of Darius. Josephus speaks of a fourth daughter of Cyrus called Meroź, but without saying who was the mother of this princess. Cambyses was probably born about 558, soon after his father's accession, and he was his legitimate successor, according to the Persian customwhich assigned the crown to the eldest of the sons born in the purple. He had been associated, as we have seen, in the Babylonian regal powerimmediately after the victory over Nabonidus, and on the eve of hisdeparture for the fatal campaign against the Massagetse his father, again in accordance with the Persian law, had appointed him regent. Alater tradition, preserved by Ctesias, relates that on this occasion theterritory had been divided between the two sons: Smerdis, here calledTanyoxarkes, having received as his share Bactriana, the Khoramnians, the Parthians, and the Carmanians, under the suzerainty of his brother. Cambyses, it is clear, inherited the whole empire, but intriguesgathered round Smerdis, and revolts broke out in the provinces, incited, so it was said, whether rightly or wrongly, by his partisans. * The newking was possessed of a violent, merciless temper, and the Persianssubsequently emphasised the fact by saying that Cyrus had been afather to them, Cambyses a master. The rebellions were repressed with avigorous hand, and finally Smerdis disappeared by royal order, and thesecret of his fate was so well kept, that it was believed, even by hismother and sisters, that he was merely imprisoned in some obscure Medianfortress. ** * Herodotus speaks of peoples subdued by Cambyses in Asia, and this allusion can only refer to a revolt occurring after the death of Cyrus, before the Egyptian expedition; these troubles are explicitly recorded in Xenophon. ** The inscription of Behistun says distinctly that Cambyses had his brother Bardīya put to death before the Egyptian expedition; on the other hand, Herodotus makes the murder occur during the Egyptian expedition and Ctesias after this expedition. Ctesias' version of the affair adds that Cambyses, the better to dissimulate his crime, ordered the murderer Sphendadates to pass himself off as Tanyoxarkes, as there was a great resemblance between the two: Sphendadates --the historian goes on to say--was exiled to Bactriana, and it was not until five years afterwards that the mother of the two princes heard of the murder and of the substitution. These additions to the story are subsequent developments suggested by the traditional account of the Pseudo-Smerdis. In recent times several authorities have expressed the opinion that all that is told us of the murder of Smerdis and about the Pseudo-Smerdis is merely a legend, invented by Darius or those about him in order to justify his usurpation in the eyes of the people: the Pseudo-Smerdis would be Smerdis himself, who revolted against Cambyses, and was then, after he had reigned a few months, assassinated by Darius. Winckler acknowledges "that certainty is impossible in such a case;" and, in reality, all ancient tradition is against his hypothesis, and it is best to accept Herodotus' account, with all its contradictions, until contemporaneous documents enable us to decide what to accept and what to reject in it. The ground being cleared of his rival, and affairs on the Scythianfrontier reduced to order, Cambyses took up the projects against Egyptat the exact point at which his predecessor had left them. Amasis, whofor ten years had been expecting an attack, had taken every precautionin his power against it, and had once more patiently begun to makeovertures of alliance with the Hellenic cities; those on the Europeancontinent did not feel themselves so seriously menaced as to consider itto their interest to furnish him with any assistance, but the Greeks ofthe independent islands, with their chief, Poly crates, tyrant of Samos, received his advances with alacrity. Polycrates had at his disposala considerable fleet, the finest hitherto seen in the waters of theĘgean, and this, combined with the Egyptian navy, was not any too largea force to protect the coasts of the Delta, now that the Persians had attheir disposition not only the vessels of the Ęolian and Ionian cities, but those of Phoenicia and Cyprus. A treaty was concluded, bringingabout an exchange of presents and amenities between the two princeswhich lasted as long as peace prevailed, but was ruptured at thecritical moment by the action of Polycrates, though not actually throughhis own fault. The aristocratic party, whose chiefs were always secretlyplotting his overthrow, had given their adherence to the Persians, and their conduct became so threatening about the time of the death ofCyras, that Polycrates had to break his engagements with Egypt in orderto avert a catastrophe. * * Herodotus laid the blame for the breach of the treaty to the King of Egypt, and attributed to his fear of the constant good fortune of Polycrates. The lattor's accession to power is fixed at about the year 540 by some, by others in the year 537, or in the year 533-2; his negotiations with Amasis must be placed somewhere during the last fifteen years of the Pharaoh. He made a treaty with the Persian king, and sent a squadron of fortygalleys to join the fleet then being equipped in the Phoenician ports. * * Herodotus records two opposing traditions: one that the Samians joined in the Egyptian campaign, the other that they went only as far as the neighbourhood of Karpathos. Amasis, therefore, when war at last broke out, found himself leftto face the enemy alone. The struggle was inevitable, and all theinhabitants of the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean had long foreseenits coming. Without taking into consideration the danger to which thePersian empire and its Syrian provinces were exposed by the proximity ofa strong and able power such as Egypt, the hardy and warlike characterof Cambyses would naturally have prompted him to make an attempt toachieve what his predecessors, the warrior-kings of Nineveh and Babylon, had always failed to accomplish successfully. Policy ruled his line ofaction, and was sufficient to explain it, but popular imagination soughtother than the very natural causes which had brought the most ancientand most recent of the great empires of the world into opposition;romantic reasons were therefore invented to account for the great dramawhich was being enacted, and the details supplied varied considerably, according as the tradition was current in Asia or Africa. It was saidthat a physician lent to Cyrus by Amasis, to treat him for an affectionof the eyes, was the cause of all the evil. The unfortunate man, detained at Susa and chafing at his exile, was said to have advisedCambyses to ask for the daughter of Pharaoh in marriage, hoping eitherthat Amasis would grant the request, and be dishonoured in the eyesof his subjects for having degraded the solar race by a union with abarbarian, or that he would boldly refuse, and thus arouse the hatredof the Persians against himself. Amasis, after a slight hesitation, substituted Nitźtis, a daughter of Apries, for his own child. Ithappened that one day in sport Cambyses addressed the princess by thename of her supposed father, whereupon she said, "I perceive, O king, that you have no suspicion of the way in which you have been deceived byAmasis; he took me, and having dressed me up as his own daughter, sentme to you. In reality I am the daughter of Apries, who was his lord andmaster until the day that he revolted, and, in concert with the rest ofthe Egyptians, put his sovereign to death. " The deceit which Cambysesthus discovered had been put upon him irritated him so greatly as toinduce him to turn his arms against Egypt. So ran the Persian account ofthe tale, but on the banks of the Nile matters were explained otherwise. Here it was said that it was to Cyrus himself that Nitźtis had beenmarried, and that she had borne Cambyses to him; the conquest had thusbeen merely a revenge of the legitimate heirs of Psammetichus upon theusurper, and Cambyses had ascended the throne less as a conqueror thanas a Pharaoh of the line of Apries. It was by this childish fiction thatthe Egyptians in their decadence consoled themselves before the strangerfor their loss of power. Always proud of their ancient prowess, butincapable of imitating the deeds of their forefathers, they none theless pretended that they could neither be vanquished nor ruled exceptby one of themselves, and the story of Nitźtis afforded completesatisfaction to their vanity. If Cambyses were born of a solar princess, Persia could not be said to have imposed a barbarian king upon Egypt, but, on the contrary, that Egypt had cleverly foisted her Pharaoh uponPersia, and through Persia upon half the universe. One obstacle still separated the two foes--the desert and the marshesof the Delta. The distance between the outposts of Pelusium and thefortress of Ęnysos* on the Syrian frontier was scarcely fifty-six miles, and could be crossed by an army in less than ten days. ** Formerly thewidth of this strip of desert had been less, but the Assyrians, andafter them the Chaldęans, had vied with each other in laying waste thecountry, and the absence of any settled population now rendered thetransit difficult. Cambyses had his head-quarters at Gaza, at theextreme limit of his own dominions, *** but he was at a loss how to facethis solitary region without incurring the risk of seeing half his menburied beneath its sands, and his uncertainty was delaying his departurewhen a stroke of fortune relieved him from his difficulty. * The Ęnysos of Herodotus is now Khān Yunes. ** In 1799, Napoleon's army left Kattiyeh on the 18th of Pluviōse, and was at Gaza on the 7th of Ventose, after remaining from the 21st to the 30th of Pluviōse before El- Arīsh besieging that place. *** This seems to follow from the tradition, according to which Cambyses left his treasures at Gaza during the Egyptian campaign, and the town was thence called _Gaza_, "the treasury. " The etymology is false, but the fact that suggested it is probably correct, considering the situation of Gaza and the part it must necessarily play in an invasion of Egypt. Phanes of Halicarnassus, one of the mercenaries in the service of Egypt, a man of shrewd judgment and an able soldier, fell out with Amasis forsome unknown reason, and left him to offer his services to his rival. This was a serious loss for Egypt, since Phanes possessed considerableauthority over the mercenaries, and was better versed in Egyptianaffairs than any other person. He was pursued and taken within sight ofthe Lycian coast, but he treated his captors to wine and escaped fromthem while they were intoxicated. He placed Cambyses in communicationwith the shźkh of the scattered tribes between Syria and the Delta. TheArab undertook to furnish the Persian king with guides, as one of hispredecessors had done in years gone by for Esar-haddon, and to stationrelays of camels laden with water along the route that the invading armywas to follow. Having taken these precautions, Cambyses entrusted thecares of government and the regulation of his household to Oropastes, *one of the Persian magi, and gave the order to march forward. * Herodotus calls this individual Patizeithes, and Dionysius of Miletus, who lived a little before Herodotus, gives Panzythes as a variant of this name: the variant passed into the Syncellus as Pauzythes, but the original form Patikhshāyathiya is a title signifying _viceroy, regent, or minister_, answering to the modern Persian _Padishah_: Herodotus, or the author he quotes, has taken the name of the office for that of the individual. On the other hand, Pompeius Trogus, who drew his information from good sources, mentions, side by side with Comčtes or Gaumata, his brother Oropastes, whose name Ahura-upashta is quite correct, and may mean, _Him whom Ahura helps_. It is generally admitted that Pompeius Trogus, or rather Justin, has inverted the parts they played, and that his Comčtes is the Pseudo- Smerdis, and not, as he says, Oropastes; it was, then, the latter who was the usurper's brother, and it is his name of Oropastes which should be substituted for that of the Patizeithes of Herodotus. [Illustration: 138. Jpg Psammetichus III. ] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the original in the Louvre. On arriving at Pelusium, he learned that his adversary no longerexisted. Amasis had died after a short illness, and was succeeded by hisson Psammetichus III. This change of command, at the most critical moment, was almost initself, a disaster. Ąmasis, with his consummate experience of men andthings, his intimate knowledge of the resources of Egypt, his talents asa soldier and a general, his personal prestige, his Hellenic leanings, commanded the confidence of his own men and the respect of foreigners;but what could be expected of his unknown successor, and who could saywhether he were equal to the heavy task which fate had assigned to him?The whole of the Nile valley was a prey to gloomy presentiment. * * Psammetichus III. Has left us very few monuments, which is accounted for by the extreme shortness of his reign. For the same reason doubtless several writers of classical times have ignored his existence, and have made the conquest of Egypt take place under Amasis. Ctesias calls the Pharaoh Amyrtseus, and gives the same name to those who rebelled against the Persians in his own time, and he had an account of the history of the conquest entirely different from that of Herodotus. Egypt was threatened not only, as in the previous century, by thenations of the Tigris and Euphrates, but all Asia, from the Indus to theHellespont, was about to fall on her to crush her. She was destituteof all human help and allies, and the gods themselves appeared to haveforsaken her. The fellahin, inspired with vague alarm, recognised evilomens in all around them. Rain is rare in the Thebaid, and storms occurthere only twice or three times in a century: but a few days after theaccession of Psammetichus, a shower of fine rain fell at Thebes, anevent, so it was stated with the exaggeration characteristic of thebearers of ill news, which had never before occurred. * * The inhabitants of the Said have, up to our own time, always considered rain in the valley as an ill-omened event. They used to say in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when speaking of Napoleon's expedition, "We knew that misfortune threatened us, because it rained at Luxor shortly before the French came. " Wilkinson assures us that rain is not so rare at Thebes as Herodotus thought: he speaks of five or six showers a year, and of a great storm on an average every ten years. But even he admits that it is confined to the mountain district, and does not reach the plain: I never heard of rain at Luxor during the six winters that I spent in Upper Egypt. Pharaoh hastened to meet the invader with all the men, chariots, andnative bowmen at his disposal, together with his Libyan and Cyrenoanauxiliaries, and the Ionians, Carians, and Greeks of the isles andmainland. The battle took place before Pelusium, and was fought onboth sides with brave desperation, since defeat meant servitude for theEgyptians, and for the Persians, cut off by the desert from possibleretreat, captivity or annihilation. Phanes had been obliged to leave hischildren behind him, and Pharaoh included them in his suite, to serve, if needful, as hostages. The Carians and Ionians, who felt themselvesdisgraced by the defection of their captain, called loudly for them justbefore the commencement of the action. They were killed immediately infront of the lines, their father being a powerless onlooker; their bloodwas thrown into a cask half full of wine, and the horrible mixturewas drunk by the soldiers, who then furiously charged the enemy'sbattalions. The issue of the struggle was for a long time doubtful, butthe Egyptians were inferior in numbers; towards evening their lines gaveway and the flight began. * All was not, however, lost, if Psammetichushad but followed the example of Taharqa, and defended the passage of thevarious canals and arms of the river, disputing the ground inch by inchwith the Persians, and gaining time meanwhile to collect a fresh army. The king lost his presence of mind, and without attempting to rally whatremained of his regiments, he hastened to take refuge within the WhiteWall. Cambyses halted a few days to reduce Pelusium, ** and in the meantime sent a vessel of Mitylene to summon Memphis to capitulate: theinfuriated populace, as soon as they got wind of the message, massacredthe herald and the crew, and dragged their bleeding limbs through thestreets. * According to Herodotus, eighty years later the battle- field used to be shown covered with bones, and it was said that the Egyptians could be distinguished from the Persians by the relative hardness of their skulls. ** Polysenus hands down a story that Cambyses, in order to paralyse the resistance of the besieged, caused cats, dogs, ibises, and other sacred animals to march at the head of his attacking columns: the Egyptians would not venture to use their arms for fear of wounding or killing some of their gods. The city held out for a considerable time; when at length she openedher gates, the remaining inhabitants of the Said who had hesitated up tothen, hastened to make their submission, and the whole of Egypt as faras Philae became at one stroke a Persian province. The Libyans did notwait to be summoned to bring their tribute; Cyrene and Barca followedtheir example, but their offerings were so small that the conqueror'sirritation was aroused, and deeming himself mocked, he gave way to hisanger, and instead of accepting them, he threw them to his soldiers withhis own hand (B. C. 525). * * The question as to the year in which Egypt was subdued by Cambyses has long divided historians: I still agree with those who place the conquest in the spring of 525. This sudden collapse of a power whose exalted position had defied allattacks for centuries, and the tragic fate of the king who had receivedhis crown merely to lose it, filled contemporary beholders withastonishment and pity. It was said that, ten days after the capitulationof Memphis, the victorious king desired out of sport to test theendurance of his prisoner. Psammetichus beheld his daughter and thedaughters of his nobles pass before him, half naked, with jars on theirshoulders, and go down to the Nile to fetch water from the river likecommon slaves; his son and two thousand young men of the same age, inchains and with ropes round their necks, also defiled before him ontheir way to die as a revenge for the murder of the Mitylenians; yet henever for a moment lost his royal imperturbability. But when one ofhis former companions in pleasure chanced to pass, begging for almsand clothed in rags, Psammetichus suddenly broke out into weeping, andlacerated his face in despair. Cambyses, surprised at this excessivegrief in a man who up till then had exhibited such fortitude, demandedthe reason of his conduct. "Son of Cyrus, " he replied, "the misfortunesof my house are too unparalleled to weep over, but not the affliction ofmy friend. When a man, on the verge of old age, falls from luxury andabundance into extreme poverty, one may well lament his fate. " When thespeech was reported to Cambyses, he fully recognised the truth of it. Croesus, who was also present, shed tears, and the Persians round himwere moved with pity. Cambyses, likewise touched, commanded that theson of the Pharaoh should be saved, but the remission of the sentencearrived too late. He at all events treated Pharaoh himself withconsideration, and it is possible that he might have replaced him onthe throne, under an oath of vassalage, had he not surprised him ina conspiracy against his own life. He thereupon obliged him to poisonhimself by drinking bulls' blood, and he confided the government of theNile valley to a Persian named Aryandes. No part of the ancient world now remained unconquered except thesemi-fabulous kingdom of Ethiopia in the far-off south. Cities andmonarchies, all the great actors of early times, had been laid inthe dust one after another--Tyre, Damascus, Carchemish, Urartu, Elam, Assyria, Jerusalem, Media, the Lydians, Babylon, and finally Egypt; andthe prey they had fought over so fiercely and for so many centuries, now belonged in its entirety to one master for the first time as faras memory could reach back into the past. Cambyses, following in thefootsteps of Cyrus, had pursued his victorious way successfully, butit was another matter to consolidate his conquests and to succeedin governing within the limits of one empire so many incongruouselements--the people of the Caucasus and those of the Nile valley, theGreeks of the Ęgean and the Iranians, the Scythians from beyond the Oxusand the Semites of the banks of the Euphrates or of the Mediterraneancoast; and time alone would show whether this heritage would not fall topieces as quickly as it had been built up. The Asiatic elements of theempire appeared, at all events for the moment, content with their lot, and Babylon showed herself more than usually resigned; but Egypthad never accepted the yoke of the stranger willingly, and the mostfortunate of her Assyrian conquerors had never exercised more than apassing supremacy over her. Cambyses realised that he would never masterher except by governing her himself for a period of several years, andby making himself as Egyptian as a Persian could be without offendinghis own subjects at home. He adopted the titles of the Pharaohs, theirdouble cartouche, their royal costume, and their solar filiation; asmuch to satisfy his own personal animosity as to conciliate the Egyptianpriests, he repaired to Sais, violated the tomb of Amasis, and burnt themummy after offering it every insult. * * Herodotus gives also a second account, which declares that Cambyses thus treated the body, not of Amasis, but of some unknown person whom he took for Amasis. The truth of the story is generally contested, for the deed would have been, as Herodotus himself remarks, contrary to Persian ideas about the sanctity of fire. I think that by his cruel treatment of the mummy, Cambyses wished to satisfy the hatred of the natives against the Greek-loving king, and so render himself more acceptable to them. The destruction of the mummy entailing that of the soul, his act gave the Saitic population a satisfaction similar to that experienced by the refined cruelty of those who, a few centuries ago, killed their enemies when in a state of deadly sin, and so ensure not only their dismissal from this world, but also their condemnation in the next. [Illustration: 145. Jpg THE NAOPHOROS STATUETTE OF THE VATICAN] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph: the head and hands are a restoration of the eighteenth century, in the most inappropriate Gręco-Roman style. He removed his troops from the temple of Nīt, which they had turned intoa barrack to the horror of the faithful, and restored at his own expensethe damage they had done to the building. He condescended so far asto receive instruction in the local religion, and was initiated in theworship of the goddess by the priest Uzaharrīsnīti. This was, afterall, a pursuance of the policy employed by his father towards theBabylonians, and the projects which he had in view necessitated hisgaining the confidence of the people at all costs. Asia having no moreto offer him, two almost untried fields lay open to his ambition--Africaand Europe--the Greek world and what lay beyond it, the Carthaginianworld and Ethiopia. The necessity of making a final reckoning with Egypthad at the outset summoned him to Africa, and it was therefore in thatcontinent that he determined to carry on his conquests. Memphis wasnecessarily the base of his operations, the only point from whichhe could direct the march of his armies in a westerly or southerlydirection, and at the same time keep in touch with the rest of hisempire, and he would indeed have been imprudent had he neglectedanything which could make him acceptable to its inhabitants. As soon ashe felt he had gained their sympathies, he despatched two expeditions, one to Carthage and one to Ethiopia. Cyrene had spontaneously offeredhim her homage; he now further secured it by sending thither with allhonour Ladikź, the widow of Amasis, and he apparently contemplatedtaking advantage of the good will of the Cyrenians to approach Carthageby sea. The combined fleets of Ionia and Phonicia were without doubtnumerically sufficient for this undertaking, but the Tyrians refused toserve against their own colonies, and he did not venture to employ theGreeks alone in waters which were unfamiliar to them. Besides this, theinformation which he obtained from those about him convinced him thatthe overland route would enable him to reach his destination more surelyif more slowly; it would lead him from the banks of the Nile to theOases of the Theban desert, from there to the Ammonians, and thence byway of the Libyans bordering on the Syrtes and the Liby-phoenicians. Hedespatched an advance-guard of fifty thousand men from Thebes to occupythe Oasis of Ammon and to prepare the various halting-places forthe bulk of the troops. The fate of these men has never been clearlyascertained. They crossed the Oasis of El-Khargeh and proceeded tothe north-west in the direction of the oracle. The natives afterwardsrelated that when they had arrived halfway, a sudden storm of wind fellupon them, and the entire force was buried under mounds of sand duringa halt. Cambyses was forced to take their word; in spite of all hisendeavours, no further news of his troops was forthcoming, except thatthey never reached the temple, and that none of the generals or soldiersever again saw Egypt (524). The expedition to Ethiopia was not moresuccessful. Since the retreat of Tanuatamanu, the Pharaohs of Napata hadsevered all direct relations with Asia; but on being interfered withby Psammetichus I. And II. , they had repulsed the invaders, and hadmaintained their frontier almost within sight of Philę. * In Nubia properthey had merely a few outposts stationed in the ruins of the towns ofthe Theban period--at Derr, at Pnubsu, at Wady-Halfa, and at Semneh;the population again becoming dense and the valley fertile to thesouth of this spot. Kush, like Egypt, was divided into two regions--To-Qonusīt, with its cities of Danguru, ** Napata, Asta-muras, andBarua; and Alo, *** which extended along the White and the Blue Nilein the plain of Sennaar: the Asmakh, the descendants of the Mashauashaemigrants of the time of Psammetichus I. , dwelt on the southern borderof Alo. * The northern boundary of Ethiopia is given us approximately by the lists of temples in the inscriptions of Harsiatef and of Nastosenen: Pnubsu is mentioned several times as receiving gifts from the king, which carries the permanent dominion of the Ethiopian kings as far as the second cataract. ** Now Old Dongola. *** Berua is the Meroź of Strabo, Astaboras the modern Ed- Dameīr, and Alo the kingdom of Aloah of the medięval Arab geographers. [Illustration: 147. Jpg ETHIOPIAN GKOUP] Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph by Berghoff. A number of half-savage tribes, Maditi and Bohrehsa, were settled tothe right and to the left of the territory watered by the Nile, betweenDarfur, the mountains of Abyssinia, and the Red Sea; and thewarlike disposition of the Ethiopian kings found in these tribes aninexhaustible field for obtaining easy victories and abundant spoil. Many of these sovereigns--Piōnkhi, Alaru, Harsiatef, Nastosenen--whoserespective positions in the royal line are still undetermined, speciallydistinguished themselves in these struggles, but the few monumentsthey have left, though bearing witness to their military enterprise andability, betray their utter decadence in everything connected with art, language, and religion. The ancient Egyptian syllabary, adapted tothe needs of a barbarous tongue, had ended by losing its elegance;architecture was degenerating, and sculpture slowly growing more andmore clumsy in appearance. Some of the work, however, is not wanting ina certain rude nobility--as, for instance, the god and goddess carvedside by side in a block of grey granite. Ethiopian worship had becomepermeated with strange superstitions, and its creed was degraded, in spite of the strictness with which the priests supervisedits application and kept watch against every attempt to introduceinnovations. Towards the end of the seventh century some of the familiesattached to the temple of Am on at Napata had endeavoured to bring abouta kind of religious reform; among other innovations they adopted thepractice of substituting for the ordinary sacrifice, new rites, thechief feature of which was the offering of the flesh of the victim raw, instead of roasted with fire. This custom, which was doubtless borrowedfrom the negroes of the Upper Nile, was looked upon as a shameful heresyby the orthodox. The king repaired in state to the temple of Anion, seized the priests who professed these seditious beliefs, and burnt themalive. [Illustration: 148. Jpg Encampment de Bacharis] The use of raw meat, nevertheless, was not discontinued, and it gainedsuch ground in the course of ages that even Christianity was unable tosuppress it; up to the present time, the _brindź_, or piece of beef cutfrom the living animal and eaten raw, is considered a delicacy by theAbyssinians. The isolation of the Ethiopians had rather increased than lowered theirreputation among other nations. Their transitory appearance on thebattle-fields of Asia had left a deep impression on the memories oftheir opponents. The tenacity they had displayed during their conflictwith Assyria had effaced the remembrance of their defeat. Popular fancydelighted to extol the wisdom of Sabaco, * and exalted Taharqa to thefirst rank among the conquerors of the old world; now that Kush oncemore came within the range of vision, it was invested with a share ofall these virtues, and the inquiries Cambyses made concerning it werecalculated to make him believe that he was about to enter on a strugglewith a nation of demigods rather than of men. He was informed that theywere taller, more beautiful, and more vigorous than all other mortals, that their age was prolonged to one hundred and twenty years and more, and that they possessed a marvellous fountain whose waters impartedperpetual youth to then-bodies. There existed near their capital ameadow, perpetually furnishing an inexhaustible supply of food anddrink; whoever would might partake of this "Table of the Sun, " and eatto his fill. ** * The eulogy bestowed on him by Herodotus shows the esteem in which he was held even in the Saite period; later on he seems to have become two persons, and so to have given birth to the good Ethiopian king Aktisanes. ** Pausanias treats it as a traveller's tale. Heeren thought that he saw in Herodotus' account a reference to intercourse by signs, so frequent in Africa. The "Table of the Sun" would thus have been a kind of market, whither the natives would come for their provisions, using exchange to procure them. I am inclined rather to believe the story to be a recollection, partly of the actual custom of placing meats, which the first comer might take, on the tombs in the necropolis, partly of the mythical "Meadow of Offerings" mentioned in the funerary texts, to which the souls of the dead and the gods alike had access. This divine region would have transferred to our earth by some folk-tale, like the judgment of the dead, the entrance into the solar bark, and other similar beliefs. Gold was so abundant that it was used for common purposes, even for thechains of their prisoners; but, on the other hand, copper was rareand much prized. Canibyses despatched some spies chosen from among theIchthyophagi of the Bed Sea to explore this region, and acting on thereport they brought back, he left Memphis at the head of an army anda fleet. * The expedition was partly a success and partly a failure. Itfollowed the Nile valley as far as Korosko, and then struck across thedesert in the direction of Napata;** but provisions ran short before aquarter of the march had been achieved, and famine obliged the invadersto retrace their steps after having endured terrible sufferings. *** * Herodotus' text speaks of an army only, but the accounts of the wars between Ethiopia and Egypt show that the army was always accompanied by the necessary fleet. ** It is usually thought that the expedition marched by the side of the Nile as far as Napata; to support this theory the name of a place mentioned in Pliny is quoted, Cambusis at the third cataract, which is supposed to contain the name of the conqueror. This town, which is sometimes mentioned by the classical geographers, is called Kambiusit in the Ethiopie texts, and the form of the name makes its connection with the history of Cambyses easy. I think it follows, from the text of Herodotus, that the Persians left the grassy land, the river-valley, at a given moment, to enter the sand, i. E. The desert. Now this is done to-day at two points--near Korosko to rejoin the Nile at Abu-Hammed, and near Wady-Halfah to avoid the part of the Nile called the "Stony belly, " Batn el-Hagar. The Korosko route, being the only one suitable for the transit of a body of troops, and also the only route known to Herodotus, seems, I think, likely to be the one which was followed in the present instance; at all events, it fits in best with the fact that Cambyses was obliged to retrace his steps hurriedly, when he had accomplished hardly a fifth of the journey. *** Many modern historians are inclined to assume that Cambyses' expedition was completely successful, and that its result was the overthrow of the ancient kingdom of Nepata and the foundation of that of Meroź. Cambyses would have given the new town which he built there the name of his sister Meroź. The traditions concerning Cambusis and Meroź belong to the Alexandrine era, and rest only on chance similarities of sound. With regard to the Ethiopian province of the Persian empire and to the Ethiopian neighbours of Egypt whom Cambyses subdued, the latter are not necessarily Ethiopians of Napata. Herodotus himself says that the Ethiopians dwelt in the country above Elephantine, and that half of what he calls the island of Takhompsō was inhabited by Ethiopians: the subjugated Ethiopians and their country plainly correspond with the Dodekaschźnos of the Gręco-Roman era. Cambyses had to rest content with the acquisition of those portions ofNubia adjoining the first cataract--the same, in fact, that had beenannexed to Egypt by Psammetichus I. And II. (523). The failure of thisexpedition to the south, following so closely on the disaster whichbefell that of the west, had a deplorable effect on the mind ofCambyses. He had been subject, from childhood, to attacks of epilepsy, during which he became a maniac and had no control over his actions. These reverses of fortune aggravated the disease, and increased thefrequency and length of the attacks. * * Recent historians admit neither the reality of the illness of Cambyses nor the madness resulting from it, but consider them Egyptian fables, invented out of spite towards the king who had conquered and persecuted them. The bull Apis had died shortly before the close of the Ethiopiancampaign, and the Egyptians, after mourning for him during theprescribed number of weeks, were bringing his successor with rejoicingsinto the temple of Phtah, when the remains of the army re-enteredMemphis. Cambyses, finding the city holiday-making, imagined that it wasrejoicing over his misfortunes. He summoned the magistrates before him, and gave them over to the executioner without deigning to listen totheir explanations. He next caused the priests to be brought to him, andwhen they had paraded the Apis before him, he plunged his dagger intoits flank with derisive laughter: "Ah, evil people! So you make foryourselves divinities of flesh and blood which fear the sword! It isindeed a fine god that you Egyptians have here; I will have you to know, however, that you shall not rejoice overmuch at having deceived me!" Thepriests were beaten as impostors, and the bull languished from its woundand died in a few days*1 its priests buried it, and chose another in itsplace without the usual ceremonies, so as not to exasperate the angerof the tyrant, ** but the horror evoked by this double sacrilege raisedpassions against Cambyses which the ruin of the country had failed toexcite. * Later historians improved upon the account of Herodotus, and it is said in the _De Iside_, that Cambyses killed the Apis and threw him to the dogs. Here there is probably a confusion between the conduct of Cambyses and that attributed to the eunuch Bagoas nearly two centuries later, at the time of the second conquest of Egypt by Ochus. ** Mariette discovered in the Serapseum and sent to the Louvre fragments of the epitaph of an Apis buried in Epiphi in the sixth year of Cambyses, which had therefore died a few months previously. This fact contradicts the inference from the epitaph of the Apis that died in the fourth year of Darius, which would have been born in the fifth year of Cambyses, if we allow that there could not have been two Apises in Egypt at once. This was, indeed, the usual rule, but a comparison of the two dates shows that here it was not followed, and it is therefore simplest, until we have further evidence, to conclude that at all events in cases of violence, such as sacrilegious murder, there could have been two Apises at once, one discharging his functions, and the other unknown, living still in the midst of the herds. The manifestations of this antipathy irritated him to such an extentthat he completely changed his policy, and set himself from that timeforward to act counter to the customs and prejudices of the Egyptians. They consequently regarded his memory with a vindictive hatred. Thepeople related that the gods had struck him with madness to avenge themurder of the Apis, and they attributed to him numberless traits ofsenseless cruelty, in which we can scarcely distinguish truth fromfiction. It was said that, having entered the temple of Phtah, he hadridiculed the grotesque figure under which the god was represented, and had commanded the statues to be burnt. On another occasion he hadordered the ancient sepulchres to be opened, that he might see what wasthe appearance of the mummies. The most faithful members of his familyand household, it was said, did not escape his fury. He killed his ownsister Roxana, whom he had married, by a kick in the abdomen; he slewthe son of Prexaspes with an arrow; he buried alive twelve influentialPersians; he condemned Croesus to death, and then repented, but punishedthe officers who had failed to execute the sentence pronounced againstthe Lydian king. * * The whole of this story of Croesus is entirely fabulous. He had no longer any reason for remaining in Egypt, since he had failedin his undertakings; yet he did not quit the country, and throughrepeated delays his departure was retarded a whole year. Meanwhile hislong sojourn in Africa, the report of his failures, and perhaps whispersof his insanity, had sown the seeds of discontent in Asia; and as Dariussaid in after-years, when recounting these events, "untruth had spreadall over the country, not only in Persia and Media, but in otherprovinces. " Cambyses himself felt that a longer absence would beinjurious to his interests; he therefore crossed the isthmus in thespring of 521, and was making his way through Northern Syria, perhapsin the neighbourhood of Hamath, * when he learned that a revolution hadbroken out, and that its rapid progress threatened the safety of histhrone and life. * Herodotus calls the place where Cambyses died Agbatana (Ecbatana). Pliny says that the town of Carmel was thus named at first; but the place here mentioned cannot well have been in that direction. It has been identified with Batansea in the country between the Orontes and the Euphrates, but the most likely theory is the one suggested by a passage in Stephen of Byzantium, that the place in question is the large Syrian city of Hamath. Josephus makes him die at Damascus. Tradition asserted that a herald appeared before him and proclaimedaloud, in the hearing of the whole army, that Cambyses, son of Cyrus, had ceased to reign, and summoned whoever had till that day obeyed himto acknowledge henceforth Smerdis, son of Cyrus, as their lord. Cambysesat first believed that his brother had been spared by the assassins, andnow, after years of concealment, had at length declared himself; but hesoon received proofs that his orders had been faithfully accomplished, and it is said that he wept at the remembrance of the fruitless crime. The usurper was Gaumāta, one of the Persian Magi, whose resemblanceto Smerdis was so remarkable that even those who were cognisant of itinvariably mistook the one for the other, * and he was brother to thatOropastes to whom Cambyses had entrusted the administration of hishousehold before setting out for Egypt. ** * Greek tradition is unanimous on this point, but the inscription of Behistun does not mention it. ** The inscription of Behistun informs us that the usurper's name was Gaumāta. Pompeius Trogus alone, probably following some author who made use of Charon of Lampsacus, handed down this name in the form Comčtes or Gometes, which his abbreviator Justin carelessly applied to the second brother. Ctesias gives the Mage the name Sphendadates, which answers to the Old Persian Spentōdāta, "he who is given by the Holy One, " i. E. By Ahura-mazdā. The supporters of the Mage gave him this name, as an heroic champion of the Mazdoan faith who had destroyed such sanctuaries as were illegal, and identified him with Spentōdāta, son of Wistāspa. Both of them were aware of the fate of Smerdis; they also knew that thePersians were ignorant of it, and that every one at court, includingthe mother and sisters of the prince, believed that he was still alive. Gaumāta headed a revolt in the little town of Pasyauvadā on the 14thof Viyakhna, in the early days of March, 521, and he was hailed by thecommon people from the moment of his appearance. Persia, Media, and theIranian provinces pronounced in his favour, and solemnly enthroned himthree months later, on the 9th of Garmapada; Babylon next accepted him, followed by Elam and the regions of the Tigris. Though astounded atfirst by such a widespread defection, Cambyses soon recovered hispresence of mind, and was about to march forward at the head of thetroops who were still loyal to him, when he mysteriously disappeared. Whether he was the victim of a plot set on foot by those about him, isnot known. The official version of the story given by Darius statesthat he died by his own hand, and it seems to insinuate that it wasa voluntary act, but another account affirms that he succumbed to anaccident;* while mounting his horse, the point of his dagger piercedhis thigh in the same spot in which he had stabbed the Apis of theEgyptians. Feeling himself seriously wounded, he suddenly asked thename of the place where he was lying, and was told it was "Agbatana"(Ecbatana). "Now, long before this, the oracle of Buto had predictedthat he should end his days in Agbatana, and he, believing it to be theAgbatana in Media where were his treasures, understood that he shoulddie there in his old age; whereas the oracle meant Agbatana in Syria. When he heard the name, he perceived his error. He understood what thegod intended, and cried, 'It is here, then, that Cambyses, son of Cyrus, must perish!'" He expired about three weeks after, leaving no posterityand having appointed no successor. ** * It has been pointed out, for the purpose of harmonising the testimony of Herodotus with that of the inscription of Behistun, that although the latter speaks of the death of Cambyses by his own hand, it does not say whether that death was voluntary or accidental. ** The story of a person whose death has been predicted to take place in some well-known place, and who has died in some obscure spot of the same name, occurs several times in different historians, e. G. In the account of the Emperor Julian, and in that of Henry III. Of England, who had been told that he would die in Jerusalem, and whose death took place in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster. Ctesias has preserved an altogether different tradition--that Cambyses on his return from Babylon wounded himself while carving a piece of wood for his amusement, and died eleven days after the accident. What took place in the ensuing months still remains an enigma to us. The episode of Gaumāta has often been looked on as a national movement, which momentarily restored to the Medes the supremacy of which Cyrus hadrobbed them; but it was nothing of the sort. Gaumāta was not a Mede bybirth: he was a Persian, born in Persia, in the township of Pisyauvadā, at the foot of Mount Ara-kadrish, and the Persians recognised andsupported him as much as did the Medes. It has also been thought thathe had attempted to foment a religious revolution, * and, as a matter offact, he destroyed several temples in a few months. * Most of the ancient writers shared this opinion, and have been followed therein by many modern writers. Rawlinson was the first to show that Gaumāta's movement was not Median, and that he did not in the least alter the position of the Persians in the empire: but he allows the Magian usurpation to have been the prelude to a sort of religious reform. Here, however, the reform touched less upon a question of belief than onone of fact. The unity of the empire presupposed the unity of the royalfire, and where-ever that fire was burning another could not be lightedwithout sacrilege in the eyes of the faithful. The pyres that Gaumātadesired to extinguish were, no doubt, those which the feudal familieshad maintained for their separate use in defiance of the law, and themeasure which abolished them had a political as well as a religiousside. The little we can glean of the line of action adopted by Smerdisdoes not warrant the attribution to him of the vast projects whichsome modern writers credit him with. He naturally sought to strengthenhimself on the throne, which by a stroke of good fortune he hadascended, and whatever he did tended solely to this end. The name andthe character that he had assumed secured him the respect and fidelityof the Iranians: "there was not one, either among the Medes or thePersians, nor among the members of the Achęmenian race, who dreamed ofdisputing his power" in the early days of his reign. The important thingin his eyes was, therefore, to maintain among his subjects as long aspossible the error as to his identity. He put to death all, whethersmall or great, who had been in any way implicated in the affairs of thereal Smerdis, or whom he suspected of any knowledge of the murder. Hewithdrew from public life as far as practicable, and rarely allowedhimself to be seen. Having inherited the harem of his predecessors, together with their crown, he even went so far as to condemn his wivesto a complete seclusion. He did not venture to hope, nor did those inhis confidence, that the truth would not one day be known, but he hopedto gain, without loss of time, sufficient popularity to prevent therevelation of the imposture from damaging his prospects. The seven greathouses which he had dispossessed would, in such a case, refuse torally round him, and it was doubtless to lessen their prestige that heextinguished their pyres; but the people did not trouble themselves asto the origin of their sovereign, if he showed them his favour and tookproper precautions to secure their good will. He therefore exempted theprovinces from taxes and military service for a period of three years. He had not time to pursue this policy, and if we may believe tradition, the very precautions which he took to conceal his identity became thecause of his misfortunes. In the royal harem there were, together withthe daughters of Cyrus, relatives of all the Persian nobility, and theorder issued to stop all their communications with the outer world hadexcited suspicion: the avowals which had escaped Cambyses before thecatastrophe were now called to mind, and it was not long before thosein high places became convinced that they had been the dupes of anaudacious imposture. A conspiracy broke out, under the leadership of thechiefs of the seven clans, among whom was numbered Darius, the son ofHystaspes, who was connected, according to a genealogy more or lessauthentic, with the family of the Achęmenides:* the conspiratorssurprised Gaumāta in his palace of Sikayauvatish, which was situated inthe district of Nisaya, not far from Ecbatana, and assassinated him onthe 10th of Bāgayādīsh, 521 B. C. * The passage in the Behistun inscription, in which Darius sets forth his own genealogy, has received various interpretations. That of Oppert seems still the most probable, that the text indicates two parallel branches of Achęmenides, which nourished side by side until Cambyses died and Darius ascended the throne. Such a genealogy, however, appears to be fictitious, invented solely for the purpose of connecting Darius with the ancient royal line, with which in reality he could claim no kinship, or only a very distant connection. [Illustration: 159. Jpg DARIUS, SON OF HYSTASPES] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from M. Dieulafoy. The exact particulars of this scene were never known, but popularimagination soon supplied the defect, furnishing a full and completeaccount of all that took place. In the first place, Phędimź, daughterof Otanes, one of the seven, furnished an authentic proof of the fraudwhich had been perpetrated. Her father had opportunely recalled themarvellous resemblance between Smerdis and the Magian, and rememberedat the same time that the latter had been deprived of his ears inpunishment for some misdeed: he therefore sent certain instructions toPhffidimź, who, when she made the discovery, at the peril of her life, that her husband had no ears, communicated the information to thedisaffected nobles. The conspirators thereupon resolved to act withoutdelay; but when they arrived at the palace, they were greeted with anextraordinary piece of intelligence. The Magi, disquieted by some vaguerumours which were being circulated against them, had besought Prexaspesto proclaim to the people that the reigning monarch was indeed Smerdishimself. But Prexaspes, instead of making the desired declaration, informed the multitude that the son of Cyrus was indeed dead, for hehimself had murdered him at the bidding of Cambyses, and, havingmade this confession, he put himself to death, in order to escapethe vengeance of the Magi. This act of Prexaspes was an additionalinducement to the conspirators to execute their purpose. The guardstationed at the gates of the palace dared not refuse admission to sonoble a company, and when the throne-room was reached and the eunuchsforbade further advance, the seven boldly drew their swords and forcedtheir way to the apartment occupied by the two Magi. The usurpersdefended themselves with bravery, but succumbed at length to thesuperior number of their opponents, after having wounded two of theconspirators. Gobryas pinioned Gaumāta with his arms, and in such a waythat Darius hesitated to make the fatal thrust for fear of woundinghis comrade; but the latter bade him strike at all hazards, and by goodfortune the sword did not even graze him. The crime accomplished, theseven conspirators agreed to choose as king that member of their companywhose horse should first neigh after sunrise: a stratagem of his groomcaused the election to fall on Darius. As soon as he was duly enthroned, he instituted a festival called the "magophonia, " or "massacre of theMagi, " in commemoration of the murder which had given him the crown. His first care was to recompense the nobles to whom he owed his positionby restoring to them the privileges of which they had been deprived bythe pseudo-Smerdis, namely, the right of free access to the king, aswell as the right of each individual to a funeral pyre; but the usurperhad won the affection of the people, and even the inhabitants of thosecountries which had been longest subject to the Persian sway did notreceive the new sovereign favourably. Darius found himself, therefore, under the necessity of conquering his dominions one after the other. * * The history of the early part of the reign of Darius is recorded in the great inscription which the king caused to be cut in three languages on the rocks of Behistun. The order of the events recorded in it is not always easy to determine. I have finally adopted, with some modifications, the arrangement of Marquart, which seems to me to give the clearest "conspectus" of these confused wars. The Persian empire, like those of the Chaldęans and Medes, had consistedhitherto of nothing but a fortuitous collection of provinces undermilitary rule, of vassal kingdoms, and of semi-independent cities andtribes; there was no fixed division of authority, and no regular systemof government for the outlying provinces. The governors assigned byCyrus and Cambyses to rule the various provinces acquired by conquest, were actual viceroys, possessing full control of an army, and in somecases of a fleet as well, having at their disposal considerable revenuesboth in money and in kind, and habituated, owing to their distance fromthe capital, to settle pressing questions on their own responsibility, subject only to the necessity of making a report to the sovereign whenthe affair was concluded, or when the local resources were insufficientto bring it to a successful issue. For such free administrators thetemptation must have been irresistible to break the last slender tieswhich bound them to the empire, and to set themselves up as independentmonarchs. The two successive revolutions which had taken place in lessthan a year, convinced such governors, and the nations over which theybore rule, that the stately edifice erected by Cyrus and Cambyses wascrumbling to pieces, and that the moment was propitious for each of themto carve out of its ruins a kingdom for himself; the news of the murder, rapidly propagated, sowed the seeds of revolt in its course--in Susiana, at Babylon, in Media, in Parthia, in Margiana, among the Sattagydes, in Asia Minor, and even in Egypt itself*--which showed itself insome places in an open and undisguised form, while in others it wascontemptuously veiled under the appearance of neutrality, or thepretence of waiting to see the issue of events. * In the _Behistun Inscription_, it is stated that insurrections broke out in all these countries while Darius was at Babylon; that is to say, while he was occupied in besieging that city, as is evident from the order of the events narrated. The first to break out into open rebellion were the neighbouringcountries of Elam and Chaldęa: the death of Smerdis took place towardsthe end of September, and a fortnight later saw two rebel chiefsenthroned--a certain Athrīna at Susa, and a Nadinta-bel at Babylon. *Athrīna, the son of Umbadaranma, was a scion of the dynasty dispossessedby the successors of Sargon in the preceding century, but neverthelesshe met with but lukewarm assistance from his own countrymen;** he wastaken prisoner before a month had passed, and sent to Darius, who slewhim with his own hand. * The latest known document of the pseudo-Smerdis is dated the 1st of Tisri at Babylon, and the first of Nebuchadrezzar III. Are dated the 17th and 20th of the same month. The revolt of Babylon, then, must be placed between the 1st and 17th of Tisri; that is, either at the end of September or the beginning of October, 521 B. C. ** The revolt cannot have lasted much more than six weeks, for on the 26th of Athriyādiya following, that is to say, at the beginning of December, Darius had already joined issue with the Babylonians on the banks of the Tigris. Babylon was not so easily mastered. Her chosen sovereign claimed tobe the son of Nabonidus, and had, on ascending the throne, assumed theillustrious name of Nebuchadrezzar; he was not supported, moreover, byonly a few busybodies, but carried the whole population with him. TheBabylonians, who had at first welcomed Cyrus so warmly, and had fondlyimagined that they had made him one of themselves, as they had madeso many of their conquerors for centuries past, soon realised theirmistake. The differences of language, manners, spirit, and religionbetween themselves and the Persians were too fundamental to allow ofthe naturalisation of the new sovereign, and of the acceptance bythe Achęmenides of that fiction of a double personality to whichTiglath-pileser III. , Shalmaneser, and even Assur-bani-pal hadsubmitted. Popular fancy grew weary of Cyrus, as it had already grownweary in turn of all the foreigners it had at first acclaimed--whetherElamite, Kaldā, or Assyrian--and by a national reaction the self-styledson of Nabonidus enjoyed the benefit of a devotion proportionately asgreat as the hatred which had been felt twenty years before for hispretended sire. The situation might become serious if he were given timeto consolidate his power, for the loyalty of the ancient provinces ofthe Chaldęan empire was wavering, and there was no security that theywould not feel inclined to follow the example of the capital as soonas they should receive news of the sedition. Darius, therefore, ledthe bulk of his forces to Babylon without a day's more delay than wasabsolutely necessary, and the event proved that he had good reason forsuch haste. Nebuchadrezzar III. Had taken advantage of the few weekswhich had elapsed since his accession, to garrison the same positionson the right bank of the Tigris, as Nabonidus had endeavoured to defendagainst Cyrus at the northern end of the fortifications erected by hisancestor. A well-equipped flotilla patrolled the river, and his linespresented so formidable a front that Darius could not venture on adirect attack. He arranged his troops in two divisions, which he mountedpartly on horses, partly on camels, and eluding the vigilance of hisadversary by attacking him simultaneously on many sides, succeeded ingaining the opposite bank of the river. The Chaldęans, striving in vainto drive him back into the stream, were at length defeated on the 27thof Athriyādiya, and they retired in good order on Babylon. Six dayslater, on the 2nd of Anāmaka, they fought a second battle at Zazanu, on the bank of the Euphrates, and were again totally defeated. Nebuchadrezzar escaped with a handful of cavalry, and hastened to shuthimself up in his city. Darius soon followed him, but if he cherished ahope that the Babylonians would open their gates to him without furtherresistance, as they had done to Cyrus, he met with a disappointment, for he was compelled to commence a regular siege and suspend all otheroperations, and that, too, at a moment when the provinces were breakingout into open insurrection on every hand. * * The account given by Darius seems to imply that no interval of time elapsed between the second defeat of Nebuchadrezzar III. And the taking of Babylon, so that several modern historians have rejected the idea of an obstinate resistance. Herodotus, however, speaks of the long siege the city sustained, and the discovery of tablets dated in the first and even the second year of Nebuchadrezzar III. Shows that the siege was prolonged into the second year of this usurper, at least until the month of Nisān (March- April), 520 B. C. No evidence can be drawn from the tablets dated in the reign of Darius, for the oldest yet discovered, which is dated in the month Sebat (Jan. -Feb. ), in the year of his accession, and consequently prior to the second year of Nebuchadrezzar, comes from Abu-habba. On the other hand, the statement that all the revolts broke out while Darius was "at Babylon" does not allow of the supposition that all the events recorded before his departure for Media could have been compressed into the space of three or four months. It seems, therefore, more probable that the siege lasted till 519 B. C. , as it can well have done if credit be given to the mention of "twenty-one months at least" by Herodotus; perhaps the siege was brought to an end in the May of that year, as calculated by Marquart. [Illustration: 166. Jpg DARIUS PIERCING A REBEL WITH HIS LANCE BEFORE AGROUP OF FOUR PRISONERS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the impression of an intaglio at St. Petersburg. The attempt of the Persian adventurer Martīya to stir up the Susians torevolt in his rear failed, thanks to the favourable disposition of thenatives, who refused to recognise in him Ummanīsh, the heir oftheir national princes. Media, however, yielded unfortunately to thesolicitations of a certain Fravartīsh, who had assumed the personalityof Khshatrita of the race of Cyaxares, and its revolt marked almost thebeginning of a total break-up of the empire. The memory of Astyages andCyaxares had not yet faded so completely as to cause the Median noblesto relinquish the hope of reasserting the supremacy of Media; theopportunity for accomplishing this aim now seemed all the morefavourable, from the fact that Darius had been obliged to leave thisprovince almost immediately after the assassination of the Usurper, andto take from it all the troops that he could muster for the siege ofBabylon. Several of the nomadic tribes still remained faithful to him, but all the settled inhabitants of Media ranged themselves under thebanner of the pretender, and the spirit of insurrection spread thereuponinto Armenia and Assyria. For one moment there was a fear lest it shouldextend to Asia Minor also, where Orcetes, accustomed, in the absence ofCambyses, to act as an autonomous sovereign, displayed little zeal inaccommodating himself to the new order of things. There was so muchuncertainty as to the leanings of the Persian guard of Orcetes, thatDarius did not venture to degrade the satrap officially, but despatchedBagseus to Sardes with precise instructions, which enabled him toaccomplish his mission by degrees, so as not to risk a Lydian revolt. His first act was to show the guard a rescript by which they wererelieved from attendance on Orcetes, and "thereupon they immediatelylaid down their spears. " Emboldened by their ready obedience, Bagseuspresented to the secretary a second letter, which contained hisinstructions: "The great king commands those Persians who are in Sardesto kill Orestes. " "Whereupon, " it is recorded, "they drew their swordsand slew him. "* * The context of Herodotus indicates that the events narrated took place shortly after the accession of Darius. Further on Herodotus mentions, as contemporaneous with the siege of Babylon, events which took place after the death of Orcetes; it is probable, therefore, that the scene described by Herodotus occurred in 520 B. C. At the latest. A revolt in Asia Minor was thus averted, at a time when civil warcontinued to rage in the centre of Iran. The situation, however, continued critical. Darius could not think of abandoning the siege ofBabylon, and of thus both losing the fruits of his victories and seeingNebuchadrezzar reappear in Assyria or Susiana. On the other hand, hisarmy was a small one, and he would incur great risks in detaching any ofhis military chiefs for a campaign against the Mede with an insufficientforce. He decided, however, to adopt the latter course, and while hehimself presided over the blockade, he simultaneously despatched twocolumns--one to Media, under the command of the Persian Vidarna, one ofthe seven; the other to Armenia, under the Armenian Dādarshīsh. Vidarna, encountered Khshatrita near Marush, in the mountainous region of theold Namri, on the 27th of Anāmaka, and gave him battle; but though heclaimed the victory, the result was so indecisive that he halted inKambadźnź, at the entrance to the gorges of the Zagros mountains, andwas there obliged to await reinforcements before advancing further. Dādarshīsh, on his side, gained three victories over the Armenians--onenear Zuzza on the 8th of Thuravāhara, another at Tigra ten days later, and the third on the 2nd of Thāigarshīsh, at a place not far fromUhyāma--but he also was compelled to suspend operations and remaininactive pending the arrival of fresh troops. Half the year was spent ininaction on either side, for the rebels had not suffered less than theiropponents, and, while endeavouring to reorganise their forces, theyopened negotiations with the provinces of the north-east with the viewof prevailing on them to join their cause. Darius, still detained beforeBabylon, was unable to recommence hostilities until the end of 520B. C. He sent Vaumisa to replace Dādarshīsh as the head of the army inArmenia, and the new general distinguished himself at the outset bywinning a decisive victory on the 15th of Anāmaka, near Izitush inAssyria; but the effect which he hoped to secure from this success wasneutralised almost immediately by grievous defections. Sagartia, in thefirst place, rose in rebellion at the call of a pretended descendantof Oyaxares, named Chitrantakhma; Hyrcania, the province governed byHystaspes, the father of Darius, followed suit and took up the causeof Khshatrita, and soon after Margiana broke out into revolt at theinstigation of a certain Frāda. Even Persia itself deserted Darius, andchose another king instead of a sovereign whom no one seemed willing toacknowledge. Many of the mountain tribes could not yet resign themselvesto the belief that the male line of Cyrus had become extinct with thedeath of Cambyses. The usurpation of Gaumāta and the accession of Dariushad not quenched their faith in the existence of Smerdis: if the Magianwere an impostor, it did not necessarily follow that Smerdis had beenassassinated, and when a certain Vahyazdāta rose up in the town ofTāravā in the district of Yautiyā, and announced himself as the youngerson of Cyrus, they received him with enthusiastic acclamations. Apreliminary success gained by Hystaspes at Vispauzatīsh, in Parthia, onthe 22nd of Viyakhna, 519 B. C. , prevented the guerilla bands of Hyrcaniafrom joining forces with the Medes, and some days later the fall ofBabylon at length set Darius free to utilise his resources to theutmost. The long resistance of Nebuchadrezzar furnished a fruitful themefor legend: a fanciful story was soon substituted for the true accountof the memorable siege he had sustained. Half a century later, whenhis very name was forgotten, the heroism of his people continued tobe extolled beyond measure. When Darius arrived before the ramparts hefound the country a desert, the banks of the canals cut through, and thegardens and pleasure-houses destroyed. The crops had been gathered andthe herds driven within the walls of the city, while the garrison hadreduced by a massacre the number of non-combatants, the women having allbeen strangled, with the exception of those who were needed to bake thebread. At the end of twenty months the siege seemed no nearer to itsclose than at the outset, and the besiegers were on the point of losingheart, when at length Zopyrus, one of the seven, sacrificed himselffor the success of the blockading army. Slitting his nose and ears, andlacerating his back with the lash of a whip, he made his way into thecity as a deserter, and persuaded the garrison to assign him a post ofdanger under pretence of avenging the ill-treatment he had receivedfrom his former master. He directed some successful sallies on pointspreviously agreed upon, and having thus lulled to rest any remainingfeelings of distrust on the part of the garrison, he treacherouslyopened to the Persians the two gates of which he was in charge; threethousand Babylonians were impaled, the walls were razed to the ground, and the survivors of the struggle were exiled and replaced by strangecolonists. * The only authentic fact about this story is the length ofthe siege. Nebuchadrezzar was put to death, and Darius, at lengthfree to act, hastened to despatch one of his lieutenants, the PersianArtavardiya, against Vahyazdāta, while he himself marched upon the Medeswith the main body of the royal army. ** * Ctesias places the siege of Babylon forty years later, under Xerxes I. ; according to him, it was Megabysus, son of Zopyrus, who betrayed the city. Polysenus asserts that the stratagem of Zopyrus was adopted in imitation of a Sakian who dwelt beyond the Oxus. Latin writers transferred the story to Italy, and localised it at Gabii: but the Roman hero, Sextus Tarquinius, did not carry his devotion to the point of mutilating himself. ** _Beldstun Inscr_. : "Then I sent the army of the Persians and Medes which was with me. One named Artavardiya, a Persian, my servant, I made their general; the rest of the Persian army went to Media with me. " The rebels had hitherto been confronted by the local militia, bravebut inexperienced troops, with whom they had been able to contend on afairly equal footing: the entry into the field of the veteran regimentsof Cyrus and Cambyses changed the aspect of affairs, and promptlybrought the campaign to a successful issue. Darius entered Media bythe defiles of Kerend, reinforced Vidarna in Kambadēnź, and crushed theenemy near the town of Kundurush, on the 20th of Adukanīsh, 519 B. C. Khshatrita fled towards the north with some few horsemen, doubtlesshoping to reach the recesses of Mount Elburz, and to continue therethe struggle; but he was captured at Bagā and carried to Ecbatana. Hishorrible punishment was proportionate to the fear he had inspired: hisnose, ears, and tongue were cut off, and his eyes gouged out, and inthis mutilated condition he was placed in chains at the gate of thepalace, to demonstrate to his former subjects how the Achęmenian'king could punish an impostor. When the people had laid this lessonsufficiently to heart, Khshatrita was impaled; many of his principaladherents were ranged around him and suffered the same fate, whilethe rest were decapitated as an example. Babylon and Media being thussuccessfully vanquished, the possession of the empire was assured toDarius, whatever might happen in other parts of his territory, andhenceforth the process of repressing disaffection went on unchecked. Immediately after the decisive battle of Kundurush, Vaumisa accomplishedthe pacification of Armenia by a victory won near Autiyāra, andArtavardiya defeated Vahyazdāta for the first time at Eakhā in Persia. Vahyazdāta had committed the mistake of dividing his forces and sendinga portion of them to Arachosia. Vivāna, the governor of this province, twice crushed the invaders, and almost at the same time the PersianDādardīsh of Bactriana was triumphing over Frāda and winning Margianaback to allegiance. For a moment it seemed as if the decisive issue ofthe struggle might be prolonged for months, since it was announced thatthe appearance of a new pseudo-Smerdis on the scene had been followedby the advent of a second pseudo-Nebuchadrezzar in Chaldęa. Darius leftonly a weak garrison at Babylon when he started to attack Khshatrita:a certain Arakha, an Armenian by birth, presenting himself to theBabylonian people as the son of Nabonidus, caused himself to beproclaimed king in December, 519 B. C. ; but the city was still sufferingso severely from the miseries of the long siege, that it was easy forthe Mede Vindafrā to reduce it promptly to submission after a month orsix weeks of semi-independence. This was the last attempt at revolt. Chitran-takhma expiated his crimes by being impaled, and Hystaspesrouted the Hyrcanian battalions at Patigrabana in Parthia: Artavardiyahaving defeated Vahyazdāta, near Mount Paraga, on the 6th of Garmapada, 618 B. C. , besieged him in his fortress of Uvādeshaya, and was not longin effecting his capture. The civil war came thus to an end. It had been severe, but it had brought into such prominence thequalities of the sovereign that no one henceforth dared to dispute hispossession of the crown. A man of less energetic character and calmjudgment would have lost his head at the beginning of the struggle, whenalmost every successive week brought him news of a fresh rebellion--inSusiana, Babylon, Media, Armenia, Assyria, Margiana, Hyrcania, and evenPersia itself, not to speak of the intrigues in Asia Minor and Egypt;he would have scattered his forces to meet the dangers on all sidesat once, and would assuredly have either succumbed in the struggle, orsucceeded only by chance after his fate had trembled in the balance foryears. Darius, however, from the very beginning knew how to single outthe important points upon which to deal such vigorous blows as wouldensure him the victory with the least possible delay. He saw thatBabylon, with its numerous population, its immense wealth and prestige, and its memory of recent supremacy, was the real danger to his empire, and he never relaxed his hold on it until it was subdued, leavinghis generals to deal with the other nations, the Medes included, andsatisfied if each of them could but hold his adversary in checkwithout gaining any decided advantage over him. The event justified hisdecision. When once Babylon had fallen, the remaining rebels wereno longer a source of fear; to defeat Khshatrita was the work of afew weeks only, and the submission of the other provinces followed as anatural consequence on the ruin of Media. * * Mention of some new wars is made towards the end of the inscription, but the text here is so mutilated that the sense can no longer be easily determined. [Illustration: 174. Jpg REBELS BROUGHT TO DARIUS BY AHURA-MAZD] This isthe scene depicted on the rock of Behistun. After consummating his victories, Darius caused an inscription incommemoration of them to be carved on the rocks in the pass of Bagistana[Behistun], one of the most frequented routes leading from the basin ofthe Tigris to the tableland of Iran. [Illustration: 175. Jpg THE ROCKS OF BEHISTUN] Drawn by Boudier, from Flandin and Coste. There his figure is still to be seen standing, with his foot resting onthe prostrate body of an enemy, and his hand raised in the attitude ofone addressing an audience, while nine figures march in file to meethim, their arms tied behind their backs, and cords round theirnecks, representing all the pretenders whom he had fought and putto death--Athrīna, Nadinta-bel, Khshatrita, Vahyazdāta, Arakha, andChitrantakhma; an inscription, written in the three official languagesof the court, recounts at full length his mighty deeds. The drama didnot, however, come to a close with the punishment of Vahyazdāta, forthough no tribe or chieftain remained now in open revolt, many of thosewho had taken no active share in the rebellion had, by their conductduring the crisis, laid themselves open to grave suspicions, and itseemed but prudent to place them under strict surveillance or to removethem from office altogether. Orotes had been summarily despatched, andhis execution did not disturb the peace of Asia Minor; but Aryandes, towhose rule Cambyses had entrusted the valley of the Nile, displayed noless marked symptoms of disaffection, and deserved the same fate. Thoughhe had not ventured to usurp openly the title of king, he had arrogatedto himself all the functions and rights of royalty, and had manifestedas great an independence in his government as if he had been an actualPharaoh. The inhabitants of Gyrene did not approve of the eagernessdisplayed by their tyrant Arkesilas III. To place himself under thePersian yoke: after first expelling and then recalling him, they drovehim away a second time, and at length murdered him at Barca, whitherhe had fled for refuge. Pheretimō came to Egypt to seek the help ofAryandes, just as Laarchos had formerly implored the assistance ofAmasis, and represented to him that her son had fallen a victim to hisdevotion to his suzerain. It was a good opportunity to put to ransomone of the wealthiest countries of Africa; so the governor sent to theCyrenaica all the men and vessels at his disposal. Barca was the onlycity to offer any resistance, and the Persian troops were detainedfor nine months motionless before its walls, and the city then onlysuccumbed through treachery. Some detachments forced their way as faras the distant town of Euesperides, * and it is possible that Aryandesdreamt for a moment of realising the designs which Cambyses had formedagainst Carthage. Insufficiency of supplies stayed the advance of hisgenerals; but the riches of their ally, Cyrene, offered them a strongtemptation, and they were deliberating how they might make this wealththeir own before returning to Memphis, and were, perhaps, on the pointof risking the attempt, when they received orders to withdraw. The marchacross the desert proved almost fatal to them. The Libyans of Marmarica, attracted by the spoils with which the Persian troops were laden, harassed them incessantly, and inflicted on them serious losses; theysucceeded, however, in arriving safely with their prisoners, among whomwere the survivors of the inhabitants of Barca. At this time the tide offortune was setting strongly in favour of Darius: Aryandes, anxious topropitiate that monarch, despatched these wretched captives to Persia asa trophy of his success, and Darius sent them into Bactriana, where theyfounded a new Barca. ** * This is the town which later on under the Lagidę received the name of Berenice, and which is now called Benghazi. ** It is doubtless to these acts of personal authority on the part of Aryandes that Darius alludes in the Behistun Inscription, when he says, "While I was before Babylon, the following provinces revolted against me--Persia and Susiana, the Medes and Assyria, and the Egyptians... " But this tardy homage availed him nothing. Darius himself visited Egyptand disembarrassed himself of 'his troublesome subject by his summaryexecution, inflicted, some said, because he had issued coins of asuperior fineness to those of the royal mint, * while, according toothers, it was because he had plundered Egypt and so ill-treated theEgyptians as to incite them to rebellion. * It is not certain that Aryandes did actually strike any coinage in his own name, and perhaps Herodotus has only repeated a popular story current in Egypt in his days. If this money actually existed, its coinage was but a pretext employed by Darius; the true motive of the condemnation of Aryandes was certainly an armed revolt, or a serious presumption of revolutionary intentions. After the suppression of this rival, Darius set himself to win theaffection of his Egyptian province, or, at least, to render itsservitude bearable. With a country so devout and so impressed with itsown superiority over all other nations, the best means of accomplishinghis object was to show profound respect for its national gods andits past glory. Darius, therefore, proceeded to shower favours on thepriests, who had been subject to persecution ever since the disastrouscampaign in Ethiopia. Cambyses had sent into exile in Elam the chiefpriest of Sais--that Uza-harrīsnīti who had initiated him into thesacred rites; Darius gave permission to this important personage toreturn to his native land, and commissioned him to repair the damageinflicted by the madness of the son of Cyrus. Uzaharrīsnīti, escortedback with honour to his native city, re-established there the collegesof sacred scribes, and restored to the temple of Nīt the lands andrevenues which had been confiscated. Greek tradition soon improved uponthe national account of this episode, and asserted that Darius took aninterest in the mysteries of Egyptian theology, and studied the sacredbooks, and that on his arrival at Memphis in 517 B. C. , immediately afterthe death of an Apis, he took part publicly in the general mourning, and promised a reward of a hundred talents of gold to whosoever shoulddiscover the successor of the bull. According to a popular story stillcurrent when Herodotus travelled in Egypt, the king visited the templeof Pthah before leaving Memphis, and ordered his statue to be erectedthere beside that of Sesostris. The priests refused to obey thiscommand, for, said they, "Darius has not equalled the deeds ofSesostris: he has not conquered the Scythians, whom Sesostris overcame. "Darius replied that "he hoped to accomplish as much as Sesostrishad done, if he lived as long as Sesostris, " and so conciliatedthe patriotic pride of the priests. The Egyptians, grateful for hismoderation, numbered him among the legislators whose memory theyrevered, by the side of Menés, Asykhis, Bocchoris, and Sabaco. The whole empire was now obedient to the will of one man, but the ordealfrom which it had recently escaped showed how loosely the elements of itwere bound together, and with what facility they could be disintegrated. The system of government in force hitherto was that introducedinto Assyria by Tiglath-pileser III. , which had proved so eminentlysuccessful in the time of Sargon and his descendants; Babylon andEcbatana had inherited it from Nineveh, and Persepolis had in turnadopted it from Ecbatana and Babylon. It had always been open toobjections, of which by no means the least was the great amount of powerand independence accorded by it to the provincial governors; but thisinconvenience had been little felt when the empire was of moderatedimensions, and when no province permanently annexed to the empire layat any very great distance from the capital for the time being. But thiswas no longer the case, now that Persian rule extended over nearly thewhole of Asia, from the Indus to the Thracian Bosphorus, and over aportion of Africa also. It must have seemed far from prudent to setgovernors invested with almost regal powers over countries so distantthat a decree despatched from the palace might take several weeksto reach its destination. The heterogeneity of the elements in eachprovince was a guarantee of peace in the eyes of the sovereign, andDarius carefully abstained from any attempt at unification: not only didhe allow vassal republics, and tributary kingdoms and nations to subsistside by side, but he took care that each should preserve its own localdynasty, language, writing, customs, religion, and peculiar legislation, besides the right to coin money stamped with the name of its chief orits civic symbol. The Greek cities of the coast maintained their ownpeculiar constitutions which they had enjoyed under the Mernmadas;Darius merely required that the chief authority among them should restin the hands of the aristocratic party, or in those of an elective orhereditary tyrant whose personal interest secured his fidelity. TheCarians, * Lycians, ** Pamphylians, and Cilicians*** continued under therule of their native princes, subject only to the usual obligations. Of the _corvée_, taxation, and military service as in past days; themajority of the barbarous tribes which inhabited the Taurus and themountainous regions in the centre of Asia Minor were even exempted fromall definite taxes, and were merely required to respect the couriers, caravans, and armies which passed through their territory. * Herodotus cites among the commanders of the Persian fleet three Carian dynasts, Histiseus, Pigres, and Damasithymus, besides the famous Artemisia of Halicarnassus. ** In Herodotus where a dynast named Kyberniskos, son of Sika, is mentioned among the commanders of the fleet. The received text of Herodotus needs correction, and we should read Kybernis, son of Kossika, some of whose coins are still in existence. *** The Cilician contingent in the fleet of Xerxes at Salamis was commanded by Syennesis himself, and Cilicia never had a satrap until the time of Cyrus the younger. [Illustration: 181. Jpg MAP OF THE ARCHAEMENIAN STRAPIES] Native magistrates and kings still bore sway in Phoenicia* and Cyprus, and the shźkhs of the desert preserved their authority over themarauding and semi-nomadic tribes of Idumasa, Nabatsea, Moab, and Ammon, and the wandering Bedāwin on the Euphrates and the Khabur. Egypt, under Darius, remained what she had been under the Saitic and Ethiopiandynasties, a feudal state governed by a Pharaoh, who, though aforeigner, was yet reputed to be of the solar race; the land continuedto be divided unequally into diverse principalities, Thebes stillpreserving its character as a theocracy under the guidance of thepallacide of Amon and her priestly counsellors, while the otherdistricts subsisted under military chieftains. Our informationconcerning the organisation of the central and eastern provinces isincomplete, but it is certain that here also the same system prevailed. In the years of peace which succeeded the troubled opening of his reign, that is, from 519 to 515 B. C. , ** Darius divided the whole empire intosatrapies, whose number varied at different periods of his reign fromtwenty to twenty-three, and even twenty-eight. *** * Three kings, viz. The kings of Sidon, Tyre, and Arvad, bore commands in the Phoenician fleet of Xerxes. ** Herodotus states that this dividing of the empire into provinces took place immediately after the accession of Darius, and this mistake is explained by the fact that he ignores almost entirely the civil wars which filled the earliest years of the reign. His enumeration of twenty satrapies comprises India and omits Thrace, which enables us to refer the drawing up of his list to a period before the Scythian campaign, viz. Before 514 B. C. Herodotus very probably copied it from the work of Hecatseus of Miletus, and consequently it reproduces a document contemporary with Darius himself. *** The number twenty is, as has been remarked, that given by Herodotus, and probably by Hecatęus of Miletus. The great Behistun Inscription enumerates twenty-three countries, and the Inscription of Nakhsh-ī-Rustem gives twenty-eight. Persia proper was not included among these, for she had been the cradleof the reigning house, and the instrument of conquest. * * In the great Behistun Inscription Darius mentions Persia first of all the countries in his possession. In the Inscription E of Persepolis he omits it entirely, and in that of Nakhsh-ī-Rustem he does not include it in the general catalogue. The Iranian table-land, and the parts of India or regionsbeyond the Oxus which bordered on it, formed twelve importantvice-royalties--Media, Hyrcania, Parthia, Zaranka, Aria, Khorasmia, Bactriana, Sogdiana, Gandaria, and the country of the Sakae--reachingfrom the plains of Tartary almost to the borders of China, the countryof the Thatagus in the upper basin of the Elmend, Arachosia, and theland of Maka on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Ten satrapies werereckoned in the west--Uvayā, Elam, in which lay Susa, one of thefavourite residences of Darius; Babirus (Babylon) and Chaldęa; Athurā, the ancient kingdom of Assyria; Arabayā, stretching from the Khabur tothe Litany, the Jordan, and the Orontes; Egypt, the peoples of the sea, among whom were reckoned the Phoenicians, Cilicians, and Cypriots, andthe islanders of the Ęgean; Yaunā, which comprised Lycia, Caria, and theGreek colonies along the coast; Sparda, with Phrygia and Mysia; Armenia;and lastly, Katpatuka or Cappadocia, which lay on both sides of theHalys from the Taurus to the Black Sea. If each of these provinces hadbeen governed, as formerly, by a single individual, who thus became kingin all but name and descent, the empire would have run great risk of aspeedy dissolution. Darius therefore avoided concentrating the civil andmilitary powers in the same hands. In each province he installed threeofficials independent of each other, but each in direct communicationwith himself--a satrap, a general, and a secretary of state. The satrapswere chosen from any class in the nation, from among the poor as well asfrom among the wealthy, from foreigners as well as from Persians;* butthe most important satrapies were bestowed only on persons allied bybirth** or marriage with the Achęmenids, *** and, by preference, on thelegitimate descendants of the six noble houses. They were not appointedfor any prescribed period, but continued in office during the king'spleasure. They exercised absolute authority in all civil matters, andmaintained a court, a body-guard, **** palaces and extensive parks, or_paradises_, where they indulged in the pleasures of the chase; theycontrolled the incidence of taxation, ^ administered justice, andpossessed the power of life and death. * Herodotus mentions a satrap chosen from among the Lydians, Pactyas, and another satrap of Greek extraction, Xenagoras of Halicarnassus. ** The most characteristic instance is that of Hystaspes, who was satrap of Persia under Oambyses, and of Parthia and Hyrcania under his own son. One of the brothers of Darius, Artaphernes, was satrap of Sardes, and three of the king's sons, Achemenes, Ariabignes, and Masistes, were satraps of Egypt, Ionia, and Bactriana respectively. *** To understand how well established was the custom of bestowing satrapies on those only who were allied by marriage to the royal house, it is sufficient to recall the fact that, later on, under Xerxes I. , when Pausanias, King of Sparta, had thoughts of obtaining the position of satrap in Greece, he asked for the hand of an Achęmenian princess. **** We know, for example, that Orcotes, satrap of Sardes under Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, had a body-guard of 1000 Persians. ^ Thus, Artaphernes, satrap of Sardes, had a cadastral survey made of the territory of the Ionians, and by the results of this survey he regulated the imposition of taxes, "which from that time up to the present day are exacted according to his ordinance. " Attached to each satrap was a secretary of state, who ostensibly actedas his chancellor, but whose real function was to exercise a secretsupervision over his conduct and report upon it to the imperialministers. * The Persian troops, native militia and auxiliary forcesquartered in the province, were placed under the orders, moreover, ofa general, who was usually hostile to the satrap and the secretary. **These three officials counterbalanced each other, and held each othermutually in check, so that a revolt was rendered very difficult, if notimpossible. All three were kept in constant communication with thecourt by relays of regular couriers, who carried their despatches onhorseback or on camels, from one end of Asia to the other, in the spaceof a few weeks. *** * The rōle played by the secretary is clearly indicated by the history of Orotes, satrap of Sardes. ** While Darius appoints his brother Artaphernes satrap of Lydia, he entrusts the command of the army and the fleet to Otanes, son of Sisamnes. Similarly several generals are met with at the side of Artaphernes in the Ionic revolt. *** Xenophon compares their speed in travelling to the flight of birds. A good example of the use of the camel for the postal service is cited by Strabo, on the occasion of the death of Philotas and the execution of Parmenion under Alexander. The most celebrated of the post-roads was that which ran from Sardesto Susa through Lydia and Phrygia, crossing the Halys, traversingCappadocia and Cilicia, and passing through Armenia and across theEuphrates, until at length, after passing through Matiźnź and thecountry of the Cossęans, it reached Elam. This main route was dividedinto one hundred and eleven stages, which were performed by couriers onhorseback and partly in ferry-boats, in eighty-four days. Other routes, of which we have no particular information, led to Egypt, Media, Bactria, and India, * and by their means the imperial officials in thecapital were kept fully informed of all that took place in the mostdistant parts of the empire. As an extra precaution, the king sentout annually certain officers, called his "eyes" or his "ears, "** whoappeared on the scene when they were least expected, and investigatedthe financial or political situation, reformed abuses in theadministration, and reprimanded or even suspended the governmentofficials; they were accompanied by a body of troops to support theirdecisions, whose presence invested their counsels with the strongestsanction. *** An unfavourable report, a slight irregularity, a meresuspicion, even, was sufficient to disqualify a satrap. Sometimes hewas deposed, often secretly condemned to death without a trial, and theexecution of the judgment was committed even to his own servants. * Ctesias at the end of his work describes the route leading from Ephesus to Bactriana and India. It is probable that the route described by Isidorus of Charax in his _Stathma Parthica_ already existed in the times of the Achęmenids, and was traversed by their postal couriers. ** Mention of the _Eye of the king_ occurs in Herodotus, in Ęschylus, and in Plutarch, of the _Ear_ in Xenophon; cf. The Persian proverb, according to which "The king has many eyes and many ears. " *** Xenophon affirms that these inspections were still held in his day. [Illustration: 186. Jpg Street Vender of Curios] After the Painting byGerome. A messenger would arrive unexpectedly, and remit to the guards an ordercharging them to put their chief to death--an order which was promptlyexecuted at the mere sight of the royal decree. This reform in the method of government was displeasing to the Persiannobles, whose liberty of action it was designed to curtail, and theytook their revenge in sneering at the obedience they could not refuseto render. Cyrus, they said, had been a father, Cambyses a master, but Darius was only a pedler greedy of gain. The chief reason for thisdivision of the empire into provinces was, indeed, fiscal rather thanpolitical: to arrange the incidence of taxation in his province, tocollect the revenue in due time and forward the total amount to theimperial treasury, formed the fundamental duty of a satrap, to which allothers had to yield. Persia proper was exempt from the payment of anyfixed sum, its inhabitants being merely required to offer presentsto the king whenever he passed through their districts. Thesesemi-compulsory gifts were proportioned to the fortunes of theindividual contributors; they might consist merely of an ox or asheep, a little milk or cheese, some dates, a handful of flour, or somevegetables. The other provinces, after being subjected to a carefulsurvey, were assessed partly in money, partly in kind, according totheir natural capacity or wealth. The smallest amount of revenueraised in any province amounted to 170 talents of silver--the sum, forinstance, collected from Arachosia with its dependencies Gedrosia andGrandara; while Egypt yielded a revenue of 700 talents, and the amountfurnished by Babylon, the wealthiest province of all, amounted to1000 talents. The total revenue of the empire reached the enormous sumof. £3, 311, 997, estimated by weight of silver, which is equivalent toover £26, 000, 000 of modern English money, if the greater value of silverin antiquity is taken into consideration. In order to facilitate thecollection of the revenue, Darius issued the gold and silver coins whichare named after him. On the obverse side these darics are stamped with afigure of the sovereign, armed with the bow or javelin. They were coinedon the scale of 3000 gold darics to one talent, each daric weighingnormally. 2788 oz. Troy, and being worth exactly 20 silver drachmaeor Medic shekels; so that the relative value of the two metals wasapproximately 1 to 13 1/2|. [Illustration: 188. Jpg daric of darius, SON OF HYSTASPES] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a specimen in the Bibliothčque Nationale. The most ancient type of daric was thick and irregular in shape, andrudely stamped, but of remarkable fineness, the amount of alloy beingnever more than three per cent. The use of this coinage was nowhereobligatory, and it only became general in the countries bordering on theMediterranean, where it met the requirements of international trafficand political relations, and in the payment of the army and the navy. In the interior, the medium of exchange used in wholesale and retailcommercial transactions continued to be metals estimated by weight, andthe kings of Persia themselves preferred to store their revenues in theshape of bullion; as the metal was received at the royal treasury itwas melted and poured into clay moulds, and was minted into money onlygradually, according to the whim or necessity of the moment. * * Arrian relates that Alexander found 50, 000 talents' weight of silver in the treasury at Susa; other hoards quite as rich were contained in the palaces of Persepolis and Pasargadę. Taxes in kind were levied even more largely than in money, but the exactform they assumed in the different regions of the empire has not yetbeen ascertained. The whole empire was divided into districts, whichwere charged with the victualling of the army and the court, and Babylonalone bore a third of the charges under this head. We learn elsewherethat Egypt was bound to furnish corn for the 120, 000 men of the armyof occupation, and that the fisheries of the Fayum yielded the king ayearly revenue of 240 talents. The Medes furnished similarly 100, 000sheep, 4000 mules, and 3000 horses; the Armenians, 30, 000 foals;the Cilicians, 365 white horses, one for each day in the year; theBabylonians, 500 youthful eunuchs; and any city or town which producedor manufactured any valuable commodity was bound to furnish a regularsupply to the sovereign. Thus, Chalybon provided wine; Libya and theOases, salt; India, dogs, with whose support four large villages inBabylonia were charged; the Ęolian Assos, cheese; and other places, inlike manner, wool, wines, dyes, medicines, and chemicals. These imperialtaxes, though they seem to us somewhat heavy, were not excessive, buttaken by themselves they give us no idea of the burdens which eachprovince had to resign itself to bear. The state provided no income forthe satraps; their maintenance and that of their suite were charged onthe province, and they made ample exactions on the natives. The provinceof Babylon was required to furnish its satrap daily with an _ardeb_ ofsilver; Egypt, India, Media, and Syria each provided a no less generousallowance for its governor, and the poorest provinces were not lessheavily burdened. The satraps required almost as much to satisfy theirrequirements as did the king; but for the most part they fairly earnedtheir income, and saved more to their subjects than they extortedfrom them. They repressed brigandage, piracy, competition between thevarious cities, and local wars; while quarrels, which formerly wouldhave been settled by an appeal to arms, were now composed before theirjudgment-seats, and in case of need the rival factions were forciblycompelled to submit to their decisions. They kept up the roads, and afforded complete security to travellers by night and day; theyprotected industries and agriculture, and, in accordance with theprecepts of their religious code, they accounted it an honourable taskto break up waste land or replant deserted sites. Darius himself didnot disdain to send congratulations to a satrap who had planted treesin Asia Minor, and laid out one of those wooded parks in which the kingdelighted to refresh himself after the fatigues of government, by theexercise of walking or in the pleasures of the chase. In spite of itsdefects, the system of government inaugurated by Darius secured realprosperity to his subjects, and to himself a power far greater than thatenjoyed by any of his predecessors. It rendered revolts on the part ofthe provincial governors extremely difficult, and enabled the court todraw up a regular budget and provide for its expenses without any unduepressure on its subjects; in one point only was it defective, but thatpoint was a cardinal one, namely, in the military organisation. Dariushimself maintained, for his personal protection, a bodyguard recruitedfrom the Persians and the Medes. It was divided into three corps, consisting respectively of 2000 cavalry, 2000 infantry of noble birth, armed with lances whose shafts were ornamented below with apples of goldor silver--whence their name of _mźlophori_--and under them the 10, 000"immortals, " in ten battalions, the first of which had its lancesornamented with golden pomegranates. This guard formed the nucleus ofthe standing army, which could be reinforced by the first and secondgrades of Persian and Median feudal nobility at the first summons. Forces of varying strength garrisoned the most important fortresses ofthe empire, such as Sardes, Memphis, Elephantine, Daphnę, Babylon, andmany others, to hold the restless natives in check. These were, indeed, the only regular troops on which the king could always rely. Whenevera war broke out which demanded no special effort, the satraps of theprovinces directly involved summoned the military contingents of thecities and vassal states under their control, and by concerted actionendeavoured to bring the affair to a successful issue without thenecessity of an appeal to the central authority. If, on the contrary, troubles arose which threatened the welfare of the whole empire, and thesovereign felt called upon to conduct the campaign in person, he wouldmobilise his guard, and summon the reserves from several provinces oreven from all of them. Veritable hordes of recruits then poured in, butthese masses of troops, differing from each other in their equipment andmethods of fighting, in disposition and in language, formed a herdof men rather than an army. They had no cohesion or confidence inthemselves, and their leaders, unaccustomed to command such enormousnumbers, suffered themselves to be led rather than exercise authorityas guides. Any good qualities the troops may have possessed wereneutralised by lack of unity in their methods of action, and theiractual faults exaggerated this defect, so that, in spite of theirsplendid powers of endurance and their courage under every ordeal, theyran the risk of finding themselves in a state of hopeless inferioritywhen called upon to meet armies very much smaller, but composed ofhomogenous elements, all animated with the same spirit and drilled inthe same school. By continual conquests, the Persians were now reduced to only twooutlets for their energies, in two opposite directions--in the easttowards India, in the west towards Greece. Everywhere else their advancewas arrested by the sea or other obstacles almost as impassable to theirheavily armed battalions: to the north the empire was bounded by theBlack Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, and the Siberian steppes; tothe south, by the Indian Ocean, the sandy table-land of Arabia, and theAfrican deserts. At one moment, about 512 B. C. , it is possible that theypushed forward towards the east. * * India is not referred to in the Behistun Inscription, but is mentioned in one of the Inscriptions of Persepolis, and in that of Nakhsh-ī-Rustem. The campaign in which it was subjugated must be placed about 512 B. C. [Illustration: 192. Jpg FUNERAL OFFERINGS. ] From the Iranian plateau they beheld from afar the immense plain of theHapta Hindu (or the Punjab). Darius invaded this territory, and madehimself master of extensive districts which he formed into a newsatrapy, that of India, but subsequently, renouncing all idea ofpushing eastward as far as the Granges, he turned his steps towards thesoutheast. A fleet, constructed at Peukźla and placed under the commandof a Greek admiral, Scylax of Caryanda, descended the Indus by orderof the king;* subjugating the tribes who dwelt along the banks as headvanced, Scylax at length reached the ocean, on which he venturedforth, undismayed by the tides, and proceeded in a westerly direction, exploring, in less than thirty months, the shores of Gedrosia andArabia. * Scylax published an account of his voyage which was still extant in the time of Aristotle. Hugo Berger questions the authenticity of the circumnavigation of Arabia, as that of the circumnavigation of Africa under Necho. Once on the threshold of India, the Persians saw open before them abrilliant and lucrative career: the circumstances which prevented themfrom following up this preliminary success are unknown--perhaps thefirst developments of nascent Buddhism deterred them--but certain itis that they arrested their steps when they had touched merely theoutskirts of the basin of the Indus, and retreated at once towards thewest. The conquest of Lydia, and subsequently of the Greek cities andislands along the coast of the Ęgean, had doubtless enriched the empireby the acquisition of active subject populations, whose extraordinaryaptitude in the arts of peace as well as of war might offer incalculableresources to a sovereign who should know how to render them tractableand rule them wisely. Not only did they possess the elements of a navyas enterprising and efficacious as that of the Phoenicians, but theperfection of their equipment and their discipline on land rendered themalways superior to any Asiatic army, in whatever circumstances, unlessthey were crushed by overwhelming numbers. Inquisitive, bold, andrestless, greedy of gain, and inured to the fatigues and dangers oftravel, the Greeks were to be encountered everywhere--in Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, Babylon, and even Persia itself; and it was a Greek, wemust remember, whom the great king commissioned to navigate the courseof the Indus and the waters of the Indian Ocean. At the same time, thevery ardour of their temperament, and their consequent pride, theirimpatience of all regular control, their habitual proneness tocivic strife, and to sanguinary quarrels with the inhabitants ofthe neighbouring cities, rendered them the most dangerous subjectsimaginable to govern, and their loyalty very uncertain. Moreover, their admission as vassals of the Persian empire had not altered theirrelations with European Greece, and commercial transactions between theopposite shores of the Ęgean, inter-marriages, the travels of voyagers, movements of mercenaries, and political combinations, went on as freelyand frequently under the satraps of Sardes as under the Mermnadas. Itwas to Corinth, Sparta, and Athens that the families banished by Cyrusafter his conquest fled for refuge, and every time a change of partyraised a new tyrant to power in one of the Ęolian, Ionian, or Doriccommunities, the adherents of the deposed ruler rushed in similar mannerto seek shelter among their friends across the sea, sure to repay theirhospitality should occasion ever require it. Plots and counterplots wereformed between the two shores, without any one paying much heed to theimperial authority of Persia, and the constant support which the subjectGreeks found among their free brethren was bound before long to rousethe anger of the court at Susa. When Polycrates, foreseeing the fall ofAmasis, placed himself under the suzerainty of Cambyses, the Corinthiansand Spartans came to besiege him in Samos without manifesting anyrespect for the great king. They failed in this particular enterprise, *but later on, after Oroetes had been seized and put to death, it was tothe Spartans that the successor of Polycrates, Maaandrios, appliedfor help to assert his claim to the possession of the tyranny againstSyloson, brother of Polycrates and a personal friend of Darius. ** * The date of the death of Polycrates must be placed between that of the conquest of Egypt and that of the revolt of Gaumāta, either in 524 or 523 B. C. ** The reinstatement of Syloson may be placed in 516 B. C. , about the time when Darius was completing the reorganisation of the empire and preparing to attack Greece. This constant intervention of the foreigner was in evident contradictionto the spirit which had inspired the reorganisation of the empire. Justwhen efforts were being made to strengthen the imperial power and ensuremore effective obedience from the provincials by the institution ofsatrapies, it was impossible to put up with acts of unwarrantableinterference, which would endanger the prestige of the sovereign and theauthority of his officers. Conquest presented the one and only naturalmeans of escape from the difficulties of the present situation and ofpreventing their recurrence; when satraps should rule over the Europeanas well as over the Asiatic coasts of the Ęgean, all these turbulentGreeks would be forced to live at peace with one another and in awe ofthe sovereign, as far as their fickle nature would allow. It was notthen, as is still asserted, the mere caprice of a despot which broughtupon the Greek world the scourge of the Persian wars, but the imperiousnecessity of security, which obliges well-organised empires to subjugatein turn all the tribes and cities which cause constant trouble on itsfrontiers. Darius, who was already ruler of a good third of the Hellenicworld, from Trebizond to Barca, saw no other means of keeping what healready possessed, and of putting a stop to the incessant fomentation ofrebellion in his own territories, than to conquer the mother-country ashe had conquered the colonies, and to reduce to subjection the whole ofEuropean Hellas. CHAPTER II--THE LAST DAYS OF THE OLD EASTERN WORLD _THE MEDIAN WAR--THE LAST NATIVE DYNASTIES OF EGYPT--THE EASTERN WORLDON THE EVE OP THE MACEDONIAN CONQUEST. _ _The Persians in 512 B. C. --European Greece and the dangers which itsindependence presented to the safety of the empire--The preliminariesof the Median wars: the Scythian expedition, the conquest of Thrace andMacedonia--The Ionic revolt, the intervention of Athens and the takingof Sardes; the battle of Lade--Mardonius in Thrace and in Macedonia. _ _The Median wars--The expedition of Datis and Artaphernes: the takingof Eretria, the battle of Marathon (490)--The revolt of Egypt underKhabbisha; the death of Darius and the accession of Xerxes I. --Therevolt of Babylon under Shamasherļb--The invasion of Greece: Artemision, Thermopylę, the taking of Athens, Salamis--Platsę and the final retreatof the Persians: Mycalź--The war carried on by the Athenians and theleague of Delos: Inaros, the campaigns in Cyprus and Egypt, the peace ofOallias--The death of Xerxes. _ _Artaxerxes I. (465-424): the revolt of Megabyzos--The palaces ofPasargadę. Persepolis, and Susa; Persian architecture and sculpture;court life, the king and his harem--Revolutions in the palace--XerxesI. , Sekudianos, Darius II. --Intervention in Greek affairs and theconvention of Miletus; the end of the peace of Gallias--Artaxerxes II. (404-359) and Gyrus the Younger: the battle of Kunaxa and the retreat ofthe ten thousand (401). _ _Troubles in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt--Amyrtxus and the XXVIIIthSaite dynasty--The XXIXth Sebennytic dynasty--Nephorites I, Hakoris, Psammutis, their alliances with Evagoras and with the states ofContinental Greece--The XXXth Mendesian dynasty--Nectanebo I, Tachōsand the invasion of Syria, the revolt of Nectanebo II. --The death ofArtaxerxes II. --The accession of Ochus (359 B. C. ), his unfortunate warsin the Delta, the conquest of Egypt (342) and the reconstitution of theempire. _ _The Eastern world: Elam, Urartu, the Syrian kingdoms, the ancientSemitic states decayed and decaying--Babylon in its decline--The Jewishstate and its miseries--Nehemiah, Ezra--Egypt in the eyes of the Greeks:Sais, the Delta, the inhabitants of the marshes--Memphis, its monuments, its population--Travels in Upper Egypt: the Fayum, Khemmis, Thebes, Elephantine--The apparent vigour and actual feebleness of Egypt. _ _Persia and its powerlessness to resist attack: the rise of Macedonia, Philippi --Arses (337) and Darius Codomannos (336)--Alexander theGreat--The invasion of Asia--The battle of Granicus and the conquestof the Asianic peninsula--Issus, the siege of Tyre and of Gaza, theconquest of Egypt, the foundation of Alexandria--Arbela: the conquestof Babylon, Susa, and Ecbatana--The death of Darius and the last days ofthe old Eastern world. _ [Illustration: 199. Jpg PAGE IMAGE] [Page 200 and 201 need to be rescanned] CHAPTER II--THE LAST DAYS OF THE OLD EASTERN WORLD _The Median wars--The last native dynasties of Egypt--The Eastern worldon the eve of the Macedonian conquest. _ [Drawn by Boudier, from one of the sarcophagi of Sidon, now in the Museum of St. Irene. The vignette, which is by Faucher-Gudin, represents the sitting cyno-cephalus of Nectanebo I. , now in the Egyptian Museum at the Vatican. ] Darius appears to have formed this project of conquest immediately afterhis first victories, when his initial attempts to institute satrapieshad taught him not only the condition and needs of Asia Minor, but ofthe teaching the Scythians such a lesson as would prevent them frombearing down upon his right flank during his march, or upon his rearwhile engaged in a crucial struggle in the Hellenic peninsula. On theother hand, the geographical information possessed by the Persians withregard to the Danubian regions was of so vague a character, that Dariusmust have believed the Scythians to have been nearer to his line ofoperations, and their country less desolate than was really the case. * Aflotilla, commanded by Ariaramnes, satrap of Cappadocia, ventured acrossthe Black Sea in 515, ** landed a few thousand men upon the oppositeshore, and brought back prisoners who furnished those in command withthe information they required. *** * The motives imputed to Darius by the ancients for making this expedition are the desire of avenging the disasters of the Scythian invasion, or of performing an exploit which should render him as famous as his predecessors in the eyes of posterity. ** The reconnaissance of Ariaramnes is intimately connected with the expedition itself in Ctesias, and could have preceded it by a few months only. If we take for the date of the latter the year 514-513, the date given in the Table of the Capitol, that of the former cannot be earlier than 515. Ariaramnes was not satrap of Cappadocia, for Cappadocia belonged then to the satrapy of Daskylion. *** The supplementary paragraphs of the Inscription of Behistun speak of an expedition of Darius against the Sako, which is supposed to have had as its objective either the sea of Aral or the Tigris. Would it not be possible to suppose that the sea mentioned is the Pontus Euxinus, and to take the mutilated text of Behistun to be a description either of the campaign beyond the Danube, or rather of the preliminary _reconnaissance_ of Ariaramnes a year before the expedition itself? Darius, having learned what he could from these poor wretches, crossedthe Bosphorus in 514, with a body of troops which tradition computedat 800, 000, conquered the eastern coast of Thrace, and won his way ina series of conflicts as far as the Ister. The Ionian sailors built forhim a bridge of boats, which he entrusted to their care, and he thenstarted forward into the steppes in search of the enemy. The Scythiansrefused a pitched battle, but they burnt the pastures before him onevery side, filled up the wells, carried off the cattle, and then slowlyretreated into the interior, leaving Darius to face the vast extent ofthe steppes and the terrors of famine. Later tradition stated that hewandered for two months in these solitudes between the Ister and theTanais; he had constructed on the banks of this latter river a seriesof earthworks, the remains of which were shown in the time of Herodotus, and had at length returned to his point of departure with merely theloss of a few sick men. The barbarians stole a march upon him, andadvised the Greeks to destroy the bridge, retire within their cities, and abandon the Persians to their fate. The tyrant of the Ohersonnesus, Miltiades the Athenian, was inclined to follow their advice; butHistiasus, the governor of Miletus, opposed it, and eventually carriedhis point. Darius reached the southern bank without difficulty, andreturned to Asia. * * Ctesias limits the campaign beyond the Danube to a fifteen days' march; and Strabo places the crossing of the Danube near the mouth of that river, at the island of Peukź, and makes the expedition stop at the Dniester. Neither the line of direction of the Persian advance nor their farthest point reached is known. The eight forts which they were said to have built, the ruins of which were shown on the banks of the Oaros as late as the time of Herodotus, were probably tumuli similar to those now met with on the Russian steppes, the origin of which is ascribed by the people to persons celebrated in their history or traditions. The Greek towns of Thrace thought themselves rid of him, and rose inrevolt; but he left 80, 000 men in Europe who, at first under Megabyzos, and then under Otanes, reduced them to subjection one after another, andeven obliged Amyntas I. , the King of Macedonia, to become a tributary ofthe empire. The expedition had not only failed to secure the submissionof the Scythians, but apparently provoked reprisals on their part, andseveral of their bands penetrated ere long into the Chersonnesus. Itnevertheless was not without solid result, for it showed that Darius, even if he could not succeed in subjugating the savage Danubian tribes, had but little to fear from them; it also secured for him a freshprovince, that of Thrace, and, by the possession of Macedonia, broughthis frontier into contact with Northern Greece. The overland route, inany case the more satisfactory of the two, was now in the hands of theinvader. Revolutions at Athens prevented him from setting out on his expeditionas soon as he had anticipated. Hippias had been overthrown in 510, andhaving taken refuge at Sigoum, was seeking on all sides for some oneto avenge him against his fellow-citizens. The satrap of Sardes, Arta-phernes, declined at first to listen to him, for he hoped that theAthenians themselves would appeal to him, without his being obliged tohave recourse to their former tyrant. As a matter of fact, they sent himan embassy, and begged his help against the Spartans. He promised iton condition that they would yield the traditional homage of earth andwater, and their delegates complied with his demand, though on theirreturn to Athens they were disowned by the citizens (508). Artaphernes, disappointed in this direction, now entered into communications withHippias, and such close relations soon existed between the two thatthe Athenians showed signs of uneasiness. Two years later they againdespatched fresh deputies to Sardes to beg the satrap not to espousethe cause of their former ruler. For a reply the satrap summoned themto recall the exiles, and, on their refusing (506), * their city becamethenceforward the ostensible objective of the Persian army and fleet. The partisans of Hippias within the town were both numerous and active;it was expected that they would rise and hand over the city as soon astheir chief should land on a point of territory with a force sufficientto intimidate the opposing faction. Athens in the hands of Hippias, would mean Athens in the hands of the Persians, and Greece accessible tothe Persian hordes at all times by the shortest route. Darius thereforeprepared to make the attempt, and in order to guard against any mishap, he caused all the countries that he was about to attack to be exploredbeforehand. Spies attached to his service were sent to scour the coastsof the Peloponnesus and take note of all its features, the state ofits ports, the position of the islands and the fortresses; and theypenetrated as far as Italy, if we may believe the story subsequentlytold to Herodotus. ** * Herodotus fixes the date at the time when the Athenians first ostracised the principal partisans of the Pisistratids, and amongst others Hipparchus, son of Charmes, i. E. In 507-6. ** Herodotus said that Darius sent spies with the physician Democedes of Crotona shortly before the Scythian expedition. While he thus studied the territory from a distance, he did not neglectprecautions nearer to hand, but ordered the Milesians to occupy inhis name the principal stations of the Ęgean between Ionia and Attica. Histiasus, whose loyalty had stood Darius in such good stead at thebridge over the Danube, did not, however, appear to him equal to sodelicate a task: the king summoned him to Susa on some slight pretext, loaded him with honours, and replaced him by his nephew Aristagoras. Aristagoras at once attempted to justify the confidence placed in him bytaking possession of Naxos; but the surprise that he had prepared endedin failure, discontent crept in among his men, and after a fruitlesssiege of four months he was obliged to withdraw (499). * His failurechanged the tide of affairs. He was afraid that the Persians wouldregard it as a crime, and this fear prompted him to risk everything tosave his fortune and his life. He retired from his office as tyrant, exhorted the Milesians, who were henceforth free to do so, to make waron the barbarians, and seduced from their allegiance the crews of thevessels just returned from Naxos, and still lying in the mouths of theMeander; the tyrants who commanded them were seized, some exiled, and some put to death. The Ęolians soon made common cause with theirneighbours the Ionians, and by the last days of autumn the whole of theĘgean littoral was under arms (499). ** * Herodotus attributes an unlikely act of treachery to Megabates the Persian, who was commanding the Iranian contingent attached to the Ionian troops. ** The Dorian cities took no part in the revolt--at least Herodotus never mentions them among the confederates. The three Ionian cities of Ephesus, Kolophon, and Lebedos also seem to have remained aloof, and we know that the Ephesians were not present at the battle of Ladź. From the outset Aristagoras realised that they would be promptlyovercome if Asiatic Hellas were not supported by Hellas in Europe. While the Lydian satrap was demanding reinforcements from his sovereign, Aristagoras therefore repaired to the Peloponnesus as a suppliant forhelp. Sparta, embroiled in one of her periodical quarrels with Argos, gave him an insolent refusal;* even Athens, where the revolution hadfor the moment relieved her from the fear of the Pisistratidaa andthe terrors of a barbarian invasion, granted him merely twentytriremes--enough to draw down reprisals on her immediately after theirdefeat, without sensibly augmenting the rebels' chances of success; tothe Athenian contingent Bretria added five vessels, and this comprisedhis whole force. The leaders of the movement did not hesitate to assumethe offensive with these slender resources. As early as the springof 498, before Artaphernes had received reinforcements, they marchedsuddenly on Sardes. They burnt the lower town, but, as on many previousoccasions, the citadel held out; after having encamped for severaldays at the foot of its rock, they returned to Ephesus laden with thespoil. ** * Aristagoras had with him a map of the world engraved on a bronze plate, which was probably a copy of the chart drawn up by Hecatseus of Miletus. ** Herodotus says that the Ionians on their return suffered a serious reverse near Ephesus. The author seems to have adopted some Lydian or Persian tradition hostile to the Ionians, for Charon of Lampsacus, who lived nearer to the time of these events, mentions only the retreat, and hints at no defeat. If the expedition had really ended in this disaster, it is not at all likely that the revolt would have attained the dimensions it did immediately afterwards. This indeed was a check to their hostilities, and such an abortiveattempt was calculated to convince them of their powerlessness againstthe foreign rule. None the less, however, when it was generally knownthat they had burnt the capital of Asia Minor, and had with impunitymade the representative of the great king feel in his palace the smokeof the conflagration, the impression was such as actual victory couldhave produced. The cities which had hitherto hesitated to join them, nowespoused their cause--the ports of the Troad and the Hellespont, Lycia, the Carians, and Cyprus--and their triumph would possibly have beensecured had Greece beyond the Ęgean followed the general movement andjoined the coalition. Sparta, however, persisted in her indifference, and Athens took the opportunity of withdrawing from the struggle. TheAsiatic Greeks made as good a defence as they could, but their resourcesfell far short of those of the enemy, and they could do no more thandelay the catastrophe and save their honour by their bravery. Cypruswas the first to yield during the winter of 498-497. Its vessels, in conjunction with those of the Ionians, dispersed the fleet of thePhoenicians off Salamis, but the troops of their princes, still imbuedwith the old system of military tactics, could not sustain the chargeof the Persian battalions; they gave way under the walls of Salamis, andtheir chief, Onesilus, was killed in a final charge of his chariotry. * * The movement in Cyprus must have begun in the winter of 499-498, for Onesilus was already in the field when Darius heard of the burning of Sardes; and as it lasted for a year, it must have been quelled in the winter of 498-497. His death effected the ruin of the Ionian cause in Cyprus, which on thecontinent suffered at the same time no less serious reverses. The townsof the Hellespont and of Ęolia succumbed one after another; Kymź andClazomenę next opened their gates; the Carians were twice beaten, oncenear the White Columns, and again near Labranda, and their victory atPedasos suspended merely for an instant the progress of the Persianarms, so that towards the close of 497 the struggle was almost entirelyconcentrated round Miletus. Aristagoras, seeing that his cause wasnow desperate, agreed with his partisans that they should expatriatethemselves. He fell fighting against the Edonians of Thrace, attemptingto force the important town of Enneahodoi, near the mouth of the Strymon(496);* but his defection had not discouraged any one, and Histiseus, who had been sent to Sardes by the great king to negotiate thesubmission of the rebels, failed in his errand. Even when blockaded onthe land side, Miletus could defy an attack so long as communicationwith the sea was not cut off. * In Herodotus the town is not named, but a passage in Thucydides shows that it was Enneahodoi, afterwards Amphipolis, and that the death of Aristagoras took place thirty-two years before the Athenian defeat at Drabeskos, i. E. Probably in 496. [Illustration: 209. Jpg A CYPRIOT CHARIOT] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the terra-cotta group in the New York Museum. Darius therefore brought up the Phoenician fleet, reinforced it withthe Cypriot contingents, and despatched the united squadrons to theArchipelago during the summer of 494. The confederates, even after thedisasters of the preceding years, still possessed 353 vessels, most ofthem of 30 to 50 oars; they were, however, completely defeated near thesmall island of Ladź, in the latter part of the summer, and Miletus, from that moment cut off from the rest of the world, capitulated a fewweeks later. A small proportion of its inhabitants continued to dwellin the ruined city, but the greater number were carried away to Ampź, atthe mouth of the Tigris, in the marshes of the Nār-Marratum. * * The year 497, i. E. Three years before the capture of the town, appears to be an unlikely date for the battle of Ladź: Miletus must have fallen in the autumn or winter months following the defeat. Caria was reconquered during the winter of 494-493, and by the earlypart of 493, Chios, Lesbos, Tenedos, the cities of the Chersonnesusand of Propontis--in short, all which yet held out--were reduced toobedience. Artaphernes reorganised his vanquished states entirely in theinterest of Persia. He did not interfere with the constitutions ofthe several republics, but he reinstated the tyrants. He regulated andaugmented the various tributes, prohibited private wars, and gave to thesatrap the right of disposing of all quarrels at his own tribunal. Themeasures which he adopted had long after his day the force of law amongthe Asiatic Greeks, and it was by them they regulated their relationswith the representatives of the great king. If Darius had ever entertained doubts as to the necessity for occupyingEuropean Greece to ensure the preservation of peace in her Asiaticsister-country, the revolt of Ionia must have completely dissipatedthem. It was a question whether the cities which had so obstinatelydefied him for six long years, would ever resign themselves to servitudeas long as they saw the peoples of their race maintaining theirindependence on the opposite shores of the Ęgean, and while the misdeedsof which the contingents of Eretria and Athens had been guilty duringthe rebellion remained unpunished. A tradition, which sprang up soonafter the event, related that on hearing of the burning of Sardes, Darius had bent his bow and let fly an arrow towards the sky, prayingZeus to avenge him on the Athenians: and at the same time he hadcommanded one of his slaves to repeat three times a day before him, atevery meal, "Sire, remember the Athenians!"* * The legend is clearly older than the time of Herodotus, for in the _Persę_ of Eschylus the shade of Darius, when coming out of his tomb, cries to the old men, "Remember Athens and Greece!" As a matter of fact, the intermeddling of these strangers betweenthe sovereign and his subjects was at once a serious insult to theAchęmenids and a cause of anxiety to the empire; to leave it unpunishedwould have been an avowal of weakness or timidity, which would not failto be quickly punished in Syria, Egypt, Babylon, and on the Scythianfrontiers, and would ere long give rise to similar acts of revolt andinterference. Darius, therefore, resumed his projects, but with greateractivity than before, and with a resolute purpose to make a finalreckoning with the Greeks, whatever it might cost him. The influence ofhis nephew Mardonius at first inclined him to adopt the overland route, and he sent him into Thrace with a force of men and a fleet of galleyssufficient to overcome all obstacles. Mardonius marched against theGreek colonies and native tribes which had throw off the yoke during theIonian war, and reduced those who had still managed to preserve theirindependence. The Bryges opposed him with such determination, thatsummer was drawing to its close before he was able to continue hismarch. He succeeded, however, in laying hands on Macedonia, and obligedits king, Alexander, to submit to the conditions accepted by his fatherAmyntas; but at this juncture half of his fleet was destroyed by atempest in the vicinity of Mount Athos, and the disaster, whichtook place just as winter was approaching, caused him to suspend hisoperations (492). He was recalled on account of his failure, andthe command was transferred to Datis the Mede and to the PersianArtaphernes. Darius, however, while tentatively using the land routesthrough Greece for his expeditions, had left no stone unturned to securefor himself that much-coveted sea-way which would carry him straightinto the heart of the enemy's position, and he had opened negotiationswith the republics of Greece proper. Several of them had consented totender him earth and water, among them being Ęgina, * and besides this, the state of the various factions in Athens was such, that he had everyreason to believe that he could count on the support of a large sectionof the population when the day came for him to disembark his force onthe shores of Attica. * Herodotus states that _all_ the island-dwelling Greeks submitted to the great king. But Herodotus himself says later on that the people of Naxos, at all events, proved refractory. [Illustration: 212a. Jpg ALEXANDER I. OF MACEDON] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the _Cabinet des Médailles_. [Illustration: 212b. Jpg A PHOENICIAN GALLEY] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin of Byblos in the _Cabinet des Médailles_. He therefore decided to direct his next expedition against Athensitself, and he employed the year 491 in concentrating his troops andtriremes in Cilicia, at a sufficient distance from the European coastto ensure their safety from any sudden attack. In the spring of 490 thearmy recruited from among the most warlike nations of the empire--thePersians, Medes, and Sakse--went aboard the Phoenician fleet, whilegalleys built on a special model were used as transports for thecavalry. The entire convoy sailed safely out of the mouth of the Pyramosto the port of Samos, coasting the shores of Asia Minor, and thenpassing through the Cyclades, from Samos to Naxos, where they metwith no opposition from the inhabitants, headed for Delos, where Datisoffered a sacrifice to Apollo, whom he confounded with his godMithra; finally they reached Eubęa, where Eretria and Carystos vainlyendeavoured to hold their own against them. Eretria was reduced toashes, as Sardes had been, and such of its citizens as had not fled intothe mountains at the enemy's approach were sent into exile among theKissians in the township of Arderikka. Hippias meanwhile had joined thePersians and had been taken into their confidence. While awaiting theresult of the intrigues of his partisans in Athens, he had advisedDatis to land on the eastern coast of Attica, in the neighbourhood ofMarathon, at the very place from whence his father Pisistratus had setout forty years before to return to his country after his first exile. The position was well chosen for the expected engagement. [Illustration: 214. Jpg MAP OF MARATHON] The bay and the strand which bordered it afforded an excellent stationfor the fleet, and the plain, in spite of its marshes and brushwood, wasone of those rare spots where cavalry might be called into play withoutserious drawbacks. A few hours on foot would bring the bulk of theinfantry up to the Acropolis by a fairly good road, while by the sametime the fleet would be able to reach the roadstead of Phalerum. All hadbeen arranged beforehand for concerted action when the expected risingshould take place; but it never did take place, and instead of thefriends whom the Persians expected, an armed force presented itself, commanded by the polemarch Callimachus and the ten strategi, among whomfigured the famous Miltiades. At the first news of the disembarkationof the enemy, the republic had despatched the messenger Phidippides toSparta to beg for immediate assistance, and in the mean time had sentforward all her able-bodied troops to meet the invaders. They comprisedabout 10, 000 hoplites, accompanied, as was customary, by nearly as manymore light infantry, who were shortly reinforced by 1000 Platęans. Theyencamped in the valley of Avlona, around a small temple of Heracles, ina position commanding the roads into the interior, and from whencethey could watch the enemy without exposing themselves to an unexpectedattack. [Illustration: 215. Jpg THE BATTLE-FIELD OF MARATHON] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Amédée Hauvette. The two armies watched each other for a fortnight, Datis expecting apopular outbreak which would render an engagement unnecessary, Miltiadeswaiting patiently till the Lacedaemonians had come up, or till somefalse move on the part of his opponent gave him the opportunity ofrisking a decisive action. What took place at the end of this time isuncertain. Whether Datis grew tired of inaction, or whether he suddenlyresolved to send part of his forces by sea, so as to land on theneighbouring shore of Athens, and Miltiades fell upon his rear whenonly half his men had got on board the fleet, is not known. At any rate, Miltiades, with the Platęans on his left, set his battalions in movementwithout warning, and charged the enemy with a rush. The Persians andthe Sakę broke the centre of the line, but the two wings, after havingdispersed the assailants on their front, wheeled round upon them andovercame them: 6000 barbarians were left dead upon the field as againstsome 200 Athenians and Platęans, but by dint of their valiant effortsthe remainder managed to save the fleet with a loss of only sevengalleys. Datis anchored that evening off the island of Ęgilia, and atthe same moment the victorious army perceived a signal hoisted on theheights of Pentelicus apparently to attract his attention; when he setsail the next morning and, instead of turning eastwards, proceeded todouble Cape Sunion, Miltiades had no longer any doubt that treachery wasat work, and returned to Athens by forced marches. Datis, on enteringthe roads of Phalerum, found the shore defended, and the army that hehad left at Marathon encamped upon the Cynosargź. He cruised about fora few hours in sight of the shore, and finding no movement made toencourage him to land, he turned his vessels about and set sail forIonia. The material loss to the Persians was inconsiderable, for even theCyclades remained under their authority; Miltiades, who endeavouredto retake them, met with a reverse before Paros, and the Athenians, disappointed by his unsuccessful attempt, made no further efforts toregain them. The moral effect of the victory on Greece and the empirewas extraordinary. Up till then the Median soldiers had been believedto be the only invincible troops in the world; the sight of themalone excited dread in the bravest hearts, and their name was receivedeverywhere with reverential awe. But now a handful of hoplites from oneof the towns of the continent, and that not the most renowned for itsprowess, without cavalry or bowmen, had rushed upon and overthrown themost terrible of all Oriental battalions, the Persians and the Sakę. Darius could not put up with such an affront without incurring the riskof losing his prestige with the people of Asia and Europe, who up tillthen had believed him all-powerful, and of thus exposing himself to thepossibility of revolutions in recently subdued countries, such as Egypt, which had always retained the memory of her past greatness. In theinterest of his own power, as well as to soothe his wounded pride, arenewed attack was imperative, and this time it must be launched withsuch dash and vigour that all resistance would be at once swept beforeit. Events had shown him that the influence of the Pisistratidę had notbeen strong enough to secure for him the opening of the gates of Athens, and that the sea route did not permit of his concentrating an adequateforce of cavalry and infantry on the field of battle; he thereforereverted to the project of an expedition by the overland route, skirtingthe coasts of Thrace and Macedonia. During three years he collectedarms, provisions, horses, men, and vessels, and was ready to commencehostilities in the spring of 487, when affairs in Egypt prevented him. This country had undeniably prospered under his suzerainty. It formed, with Cyrene and the coast of Libya, the sixth of his satrapies, to whichwere attached the neighbouring Nubian tribes of the southern frontier. *The Persian satrap, installed at the White Wall in the ancient palace ofthe Pharaohs, was supported by an army of 120, 000 men, who occupied thethree entrenched camps of the Saites--Daphnę and Marea on the confinesof the Delta, and Elephantinź in the south. ** Outside these militarystations, where the authority of the great king was exercised in adirect manner, the ancient feudal organisation existed intact. Thetemples retained their possessions and their vassals, and the nobleswithin their principalities were as independent and as inclined toinsurrection as in past times. The annual tribute, the heaviest paid byany province with the exception of Cossęa and Assyria, amounted onlyto 700 talents of silver. To this sum must be added the farming of thefishing in Lake Moeris, which, according to Herodotus, *** brought in onetalent a day during the six months of the high Nile, but, according toDiodorus, **** during the whole year, as well as the 120, 000 medimni ofwheat required for the army of occupation, and the obligation to furnishthe court of Susa with Libyan nitre and Nile water; the total of theseimpositions was far from constituting a burden disproportionate to thewealth of the Nile valley. * The Nubian tribes, who are called Ethiopians by Herodotus and the cuneiform inscriptions, paid no regular tribute, but were obliged to send annually two chęnikes of pure gold, two hundred pieces of ebony, twenty elephants' tusks, and five young slaves, all under the name of a free gift. ** Herodotus states that in his own time the Persians, like the Saite Pharaohs, still had garrisons at Daphnę and at Elephantine. *** Herodotus says that the produce sank to the value of a third of a talent a day during the six other months. **** Diodorus Siculus says that the revenue produced by the fisheries in the Lake had been handed over by Moris to his wife for the expenses of her toilet. [Illustration: 219. Jpg DARIUS ON THE STELE OF THE ISTHMUS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the _Description de l'Egypte_. Commerce brought in to it, in fact, at least as much money as thetribute took out of it. Incorporated with an empire which extended overthree continents, Egypt had access to regions whither the products ofher industry and her soil had never yet been carried. The produce ofEthiopia and the Sudan passed through her emporia on its way to attractcustomers in the markets of Tyre, Sidon, Babylon, and Susa, and theisthmus of Suez and Kosseir were the nearest ports through which Arabiaand India could reach the Mediterranean. Darius therefore resumed thework of Necho, and beginning simultaneously at both extremities, he cutafresh the canal between the Nile and the Gulf of Suez. Trilingualstelę in Egyptian, Persian, and Medic were placed at intervals along itsbanks, and set forth to all comers the method of procedure by which thesovereign had brought his work to a successful end. In a similar mannerhe utilised the Wadys which wind between Koptos and the Red Sea, andby their means placed the cities of the Said in communication with the"Ladders of Incense, " Punt and the Sabęans. * * Several of the inscriptions engraved on the rocks of the Wady Hammamāt show to what an extent the route was frequented at certain times during the reign. They bear the dates of the 26th, 27th, 28th, 30th, and 36th years of Darius. The country of Saba (Sheba) is mentioned on one of the stelę of the isthmus. He extended his favour equally to the commerce which they carried onwith the interior of Africa; indeed, in order to ensure the safety ofthe caravans in the desert regions nearest to the Nile, he skilfullyfortified the Great Oasis. He erected at Habīt, Kushīt, and otherplaces, several of those rectangular citadels with massive walls ofunburnt brick, which resisted every effort of the nomad tribes to breakthrough them; and as the temple at Habit, raised in former times by theTheban Pharaohs, had become ruinous, he rebuilt it from its foundations. [Illustration: 220. Jpg WALLS OF THE FORTRESS OF DITSH-EL-QALĀA] Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving by Cailliaud. Dush is the Kushīt of the hieroglyphs, the Kysis of Gręco-Roman times, and is situated on the southern border of the Great Oasis, about the latitude of Assuān. He was generous in his gifts to the gods, and even towns as obscure asEdfu was then received from him grants of money and lands. The Egyptiansat first were full of gratitude for the favours shown them, but the newsof the defeat at Marathon, and the taxes with which the Susian courtburdened them in order to make provision for the new war with Greece, aroused a deep-seated discontent, at all events amongst those who, living in the Delta, had had their patriotism or their interests mostaffected by the downfall of the Saite dynasty. It would appear that thepriests of Buto, whose oracles exercised an indisputable influence alikeover Greeks and natives, had energetically incited the people to revolt. The storm broke in 486, and a certain Khabbisha, who perhaps belongedto the family of Psammetichus, proclaimed himself king both at Sais andMemphis. * * Herodotus does not give the name of the leader of the rebellion, but says that it took place in the fourth year after Marathon. A demotic contract in the Turin Museum bears the date of the third month of the second season of the thirty-fifth year of Darius I. : Khabbīsha's rebellion therefore broke out between June and September, 486. Stern makes this prince to have been of Libyan origin. From the form of his name, Révillout has supposed that he was an Arab, and Birch was inclined to think that he was a Persian satrap who made a similar attempt to that of Aryandes. But nothing is really known of him or of his family previous to his insurrection against Darius. [Illustration: 221. Jpg THE GREAT TEMPLE OF DARIUS AT HABĪT] Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving by Cailliaud. Darius did not believe the revolt to be of sufficient gravity to delayhis plans for any length of time. He hastily assembled a secondarmy, and was about to commence hostilities on the banks of the Nilesimultaneously with those on the Hellespont, when he died in 485, in thethirty-sixth year of his reign. He was one of the great sovereigns ofthe ancient world--the greatest without exception of those who had ruledover Persia. Cyrus and Cambyses had been formidable warriors, and thekingdoms of the Bast had fallen before their arms, but they were purelymilitary sovereigns, and if their successor had not possessed otherabilities than theirs, their empire would have shared the fate of thatof the Medes and the Chaldęans; it would have sunk to its former levelas rapidly as it had risen, and the splendour of its opening yearswould have soon faded from remembrance. Darius was no less a generalby instinct and training than they, as is proved by the campaigns whichprocured him his crown; but, after having conquered, he knew how toorganise and build up a solid fabric out of the materials which hispredecessors had left in a state of chaos; if Persia maintained her ruleover the East for two entire centuries, it was due to him and to himalone. The question of the succession, with its almost inevitablepopular outbreaks, had at once to be dealt with. Darius had had severalwives, and among them, the daughter of Gobryas, who had borne himthree children: Artabazanes, the eldest, had long been regarded as theheir-presumptive, and had probably filled the office of regent duringthe expedition in Scythia. But Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, who hadalready been queen under Cambyses and Gaumāta, was indignant at thethought of her sons bowing down before the child of a woman who was notof Achęmenian race, and at the moment when affairs in Egypt auguredill for the future, and when the old king, according to custom, hadto appoint his successor, she intreated him to choose Khshayarsha, theeldest of her children, who had been borne to the purple, and in whoseveins flowed the blood of Cyrus. Darius acceded to her request, andon his death, a few months after, Khshayarsha ascended the throne. Hisbrothers offered no opposition, and the Persian nobles did homage totheir new king. Khshayarsha, whom the Greeks called Xerxes, was at thattime thirty-four years of age. He was tall, vigorous, of an imposingfigure and noble countenance, and he had the reputation of being thehandsomest man of his time, but neither his intelligence nor dispositioncorresponded to his outward appearance; he was at once violent andfeeble, indolent, narrow-minded, and sensual, and was easily swayed byhis courtiers and mistresses. The idea of a war had no attractions forhim, and he was inclined to shirk it. His uncle Artabanus exhorted himto follow his inclination for peace, and he lent a favourable ear to hisadvice until his cousin Mardonius remonstrated with him, and begged himnot to leave the disgrace of Marathon unpunished, or he would lower therespect attached to the name of Persia throughout the world. He wished, at all events, to bring Egyptian affairs to an issue before involvinghimself in a serious European war. Khabbīsha had done his best toprepare a stormy reception for him. During a period of two yearsKhabbīsha had worked at the extension of the entrenchments along thecoast and at the mouths of the Nile, in order to repulse the attack thathe foresaw would take place simultaneously with that on land, but hisprecautions proved fruitless when the decisive moment arrived, and hewas completely crushed by the superior numbers of Xerxes. [Illustration: 224. Jpg Xerxes] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a daric in the _Cabinet des Médailles_. The nomes of the Delta which had taken a foremost part in the risingwere ruthlessly raided, the priests heavily fined, and the oracle ofButo deprived of its possessions as a punishment for the encouragementfreely given to the rebels. Khabbīsha disappeared, and his fate isunknown. Achęmenes, one of the king's brothers, was made satrap, but, as on previous occasions, the constitution of the country underwentno modification. The temples retained their inherited domains, and thenomes continued in the hands of their hereditary princes, without asuspicion crossing the mind of Xerxes that his tolerance of the priestlyinstitutions and the local dynasties was responsible for the maintenanceof a body of chiefs ever in readiness for future insurrection (483). * * The only detailed information on this revolt furnished by the Egyptian monuments is given in the Stele of Ptolemy, the son of Lagos. An Apis, whose sarcophagus still exists, was buried by Khabbīsha in the Serapoum in the second year of his reign, which proves that he was in possession of Memphis: the White Wall had perhaps been deprived of its garrison in order to reinforce the army prepared against Greece, and it was possibly thus that it fell into the hands of Khabbīsha. Order was once more restored, but he was not yet entirely at liberty topursue his own plan of action. Classical tradition tells us, that onthe occasion of his first visit to Babylon he had offended the religiousprejudices of the Chaldęans by a sacrilegious curiosity. He had, inspite of the entreaties of the priests, forced an entrance into theancient burial-place of Bel-Etana, and had beheld the body of the oldhero preserved in oil in a glass sarcophagus, which, however, was notquite full of the liquid. A notice posted up beside it, threatened theking who should violate the secret of the tomb with a cruel fate, unlesshe filled the sarcophagus to the brim, and Xerxes had attempted toaccomplish this mysterious injunction, but all his efforts had failed. The example set by Egypt and the change of sovereign are sufficient toaccount for the behaviour of the Babylonians; they believed that theaccession of a comparatively young monarch, and the difficulties of thecampaign on the banks of the Nile, afforded them a favourable occasionfor throwing off the yoke. They elected as king a certain Shamasherib, whose antecedents are unknown; but their independence was of shortduration, * for Megabyzos, son of Zopyrus, who governed the province byhereditary right, forced them to disarm after a siege of a few months. * This Shamasherib is mentioned only on a contract dated from his accession, which is preserved in the British Museum. It would appear that Xerxes treated them with the greatest severity: hepillaged the treasury and temple of Bel, appropriated the golden statuewhich decorated the great inner hall of the ziggurāt, and carried awaymany of the people into captivity (581). Babylon never recovered thisfinal blow: the quarters of the town that had been pillaged remaineduninhabited and fell into ruins; commerce dwindled and industry flagged. The counsellors of Xerxes had, no doubt, wished to give an object-lessonto the province by their treatment of Babylon, and thus prevent thepossibility of a revolution taking place in Asia while its ruler wasfully engaged in a struggle with the Greeks. Meanwhile all preparationswere completed, and the contingents of the eastern and southernprovinces concentrated at Kritalla, in Cappadocia, merely awaited thesignal to set out. Xerxes gave the order to advance in the autumn of481, crossed the Halys and took up his quarters at Sardes, while hisfleet prepared to winter in the neighbouring ports of Phocę and Kymź. * * Diodorus, who probably follows Ephorus, is the only writer who informs us of the place where the fleet was assembled. Gathered together in that little corner of the world, were forces suchas no king had ever before united under his command; they comprised 1200vessels of various build, and probably 120, 000 combatants, besides therabble of servants, hucksters, and women which followed all the armiesof that period. The Greeks exaggerated the number of the force beyondall probability. They estimated it variously at 800, 000, at 3, 000, 000, and at 5, 283, 220 men; 1, 700, 000 of whom were able-bodied foot-soldiers, and 80, 000 of them horsemen. * * Herodotus records the epigram to the effect that 3, 000, 000 men attacked Thermopylę. Ctesias and Ephorus adopt the same figures; Iso-crates is contented with 700, 000 combatants and 5, 000, 000 men in all. [Illustration: 227. Jpg A TRIREME IN MOTION] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin: the left portion is a free reproduction of a photograph of the bas-relief of the Acropolis; the right, of the picture of Pozzo. The two partly overlap one another, and give both together the idea of a trireme going at full speed. The troops which they could bring up to oppose these hordes were, indeed, so slender in number, when reckoned severally, that all hopeof success seemed impossible. Xerxes once more summoned the Greeks tosubmit, and most of the republics appeared inclined to comply; Athensand Sparta alone refused, but from different motives. Athens knew that, after the burning of Sardes and the victory of Marathon, they could hopefor no pity, and she was well aware that Persia had decreed her completedestruction; the Athenians were familiar with the idea of a struggle inwhich their very existence was at stake, and they counted on the navywith which Themistocles had just provided them to enable them to emergefrom the affair with honour. Sparta was not threatened with the samefate, but she was at that time the first military state in Greece, andthe whole of the Peloponnesus acknowledged her sway; in the event of herrecognising the suzerainty of the barbarians, the latter would not failto require of her the renunciation of her hegemony, and she would thenbe reduced to the same rank as her former rivals, Tegea and Argos. Athens and Sparta therefore united to repulse the common enemy, and theadvantage that this alliance afforded them was so patent that none ofthe other states ventured to declare openly for the great king. Argosand Crete, the boldest of them, announced that they would observeneutrality; the remainder, Thessalians, Boeotians, and peopleof Corcyra, gave their support to the national cause, but did sounwillingly. Xerxes crossed the Hellespont in the spring of 480, by two bridges ofboats thrown across it between Abydos and Sestos; he then formed hisforce into three columns, and made his way slowly along the coast, protected on the left by the whole of his fleet from any possible attackby the squadrons of the enemy. The Greeks had three lines of defencewhich they could hold against him, the natural strength of which nearlycompensated them for the inferiority of their forces; these were MountOlympus, Mount OEta, and the isthmus of Corinth. The first, however, wasuntenable, owing to the ill will of the Thessalians; as a precautionarymeasure 10, 000 hoplites were encamped upon it, but they evacuated theposition as soon as the enemy's advance-guard came into sight. Thenatural barrier of OEta, less formidable than that of Olympus, wasflanked by the Euboean straits on the extreme right, but the rangewas of such extent that it did not require to be guarded with equalvigilance along its whole length. The Spartans did not at first occupyit, for they intended to accumulate all the Greek forces, both troopsand vessels, around the isthmus. At that point the neck of land was sonarrow, and the sea so shut in, that the numbers of the invading forceproved a drawback to them, and the advantage almost of necessity laywith that of the two adversaries who should be best armed and bestofficered. This plan of the Spartans was a wise one, but Athens, whichwas thereby sacrificed to the general good, refused to adopt it, andas she alone furnished almost half the total number of vessels, herdecision had to be deferred to. A body of about 10, 000 hopliteswas therefore posted in the pass of Thermopylę under the command ofLeonidas, while a squadron of 271 vessels disposed themselves near thepromontory of Artemision, off the Euripus, and protected the right flankof the pass against a diversion from the fleet. Meanwhile Xerxes hadbeen reinforced in the course of his march by the contingents fromMacedonia, and had received the homage of the cities of Thessaly; havingreached the defiles of the OEta and the Euboea, he began by attackingthe Creeks directly in front, both fleets and armies facing one another. Leonidas succeeded in withstanding the assault on two successive days, and then the inevitable took place. A detachment of Persians, guidedby the natives of the country, emerged by a path which had been leftunguarded, and bore down upon the Greeks in the rear; a certain numbermanaged to escape, but the bulk of the force, along with the 300Spartans and their king, succumbed after a desperate resistance. As forthe fleet, it had borne itself bravely, and had retained the ascendencythroughout, in spite of the superiority of the enemy's numbers; onhearing the news of the glorious death of Leonidas, they believed theirtask ended for the time being, and retired with the Athenians in theirwake, ready to sustain the attack should they come again to closequarters. The victorious side had suffered considerable losses in menand vessels, but they had forced the passage, and Central Greece nowlay at their mercy. Xerxes received the submission of the Thebans, thePhocęans, the Locrians, the Dorians, and of all who appealed to hisclemency; then, having razed to the ground Platęa and Thespisę, the onlytwo towns which refused to come to terms with him, he penetrated intoAttica by the gorges of the Cithssron. The population had taken refugein Salamis, Ęgina, and Troezen. The few fanatics who refused to desistin their defence of the Acropolis, soon perished behind their ramparts;Xerxes destroyed the temple of Pallas by fire to avenge the burning ofSardes, and then entrenched his troops on the approaches to the isthmus, stationing his squadrons in the ports of Munychia, Phalerum, and thePiręus, and suspended all hostilities while waiting to see what policythe Greeks would pursue. It is possible that he hoped that a certainnumber of them would intreat for mercy, and others being encouragedby their example to submit, no further serious battle would have to befought. When he found that no such request was proffered, he determinedto take advantage of the superiority of his numbers, and, if possible, destroy at one blow the whole of the Greek naval reserve; he thereforegave orders to his admirals to assume the offensive. The Greek fleet layat anchor across the bay of Salamis. The left squadron of the Persians, leaving Munychia in the middle of the night, made for the promontory ofCynosura, landing some troops as it passed on the island of Psyttalia, on which it was proposed to fall back in case of accident, whilethe right division, sailing close to the coast of Attica, closedthe entrance to the straits in the direction of Eleusis; this doublemovement was all but completed, when the Greeks were informed byfugitives of what was taking place, and the engagement was inevitable. They accepted it fearlessly. Xerxes, enthroned with his Immortals on theslopes of Ęgialeos, could, from his exalted position, see the Atheniansattack his left squadron: the rest of the allies followed them, andfrom afar these words were borne upon the breeze: "Go, sons of Greece, deliver your country, deliver your children, your wives, and the templesof the gods of your fathers and the tombs of your ancestors. A singlebattle will decide the fate of all you possess. " The Persians foughtwith their accustomed bravery, "but before long their numberlessvessels, packed closely together in a restricted space, begin to hampereach other's movements, and their rams of brass collide; whole rows ofoars are broken. " The Greek vessels, lighter and easier to manoeuvrethan those of the Phoenicians, surround the latter and disable them indetail. "The surface of the sea is hidden with floating wreckage andcorpses; the shore and the rocks are covered with the dead. " At length, towards evening, the energy of the barbarians beginning to flag, theyslowly fell back upon the Piręus, closely followed by their adversaries, while Aristides bore down upon Psyttalia with a handful of Athenians. "Like tunnies, like fish just caught in a net, with blows from brokenoars, with fragments of spars, they fall upon the Persians, they tearthem to pieces. The sea resounds from afar with groans and cries oflamentation. Night at length unveils her sombre face" and separates thecombatants. * * Ęschylus gives the only contemporaneous account of the battle, and the one which Herodotus and all the historians after him have paraphrased, while they also added to it oral traditions. [Illustration: 233. Jpg PART OF THE BATTLEFIELD OF SALAMIS] The advantage lay that day with the Greeks, but hostilities mightbe resumed on the morrow, and the resources of the Persians were soconsiderable that their chances of victory were not yet exhausted. Xerxes at first showed signs of wishing to continue the struggle; herepaired the injured vessels and ordered a dyke to be constructed, which, by uniting Salamis to the mainland, would enable him to oust theAthenians from their last retreat. But he had never exhibited much zestfor the war; the inevitable fatigues and dangers of a campaign wereirksome to his indolent nature, and winter was approaching, which hewould be obliged to spend far from Susa, in the midst of a countrywasted and trampled underfoot by two great armies. Mardonius, guessingwhat was passing in his sovereign's mind, advised him to take advantageof the fine autumn weather to return to Sardes; he proposed to take overfrom Xerxes the command of the army in Greece, and to set to work tocomplete the conquest of the Peloponnesus. He was probably glad tobe rid of a sovereign whose luxurious habits were a hindrance to hismovements. Xerxes accepted his proposal with evident satisfaction, and summarily despatching his vessels to the Hellespont to guard thebridges, he set out on his return journey by the overland route. At the time of his departure the issue of the struggle was as yetunforeseen. Mardonius evacuated Attica, which was too poor and desolatea country to support so large an army, and occupied comfortable winterquarters in the rich plains of Thessaly, where he recruited his strengthfor a supreme effort in the spring. He had with him about 60, 000 men, picked troops from all parts of Asia--Medes, Sakę, Bactrians, andIndians, besides the regiment of the Immortals and the Egyptian veteranswho had distinguished themselves by their bravery at Salamis; the heavyhoplites of Thebes and of the Boeotian towns, the Thessalian cavalry, and the battalions of Macedonia were also in readiness to join him assoon as called on. The whole of these troops, relieved from the presenceof the useless multitude which had impeded its movements under Xerxes, and commanded by a bold and active general, were anxious to distinguishthemselves, and the probabilities of their final success were great. Theconfederates were aware of the fact, and although resolved to persevereto the end, their maoeuvres betrayed an unfortunate indecision. Theirfleet followed the Persian squadron bound for the Hellespont for severaldays, but on realising that the enemy were not planning a diversionagainst the Peloponnesus, they put about and returned to their variousports. The winter was passed in preparations on both sides. Xerxes, onhis return to Sardes, had got together a fleet of 200 triremes and anarmy of 60, 000 men, and had stationed them at Cape Mycale, oppositeSamos, to be ready in case of an Ionian revolt, or perhaps to bear downupon any given point in the Peloponnesus when Mardonius had gainedsome initial advantage. The Lacędemonians, on their part, seem to haveendeavoured to assume the defensive both by land and sea; while theirfoot-soldiers were assembling in the neighbourhood of Corinth, theirfleet sailed as far as Delos and there anchored, as reluctant to venturebeyond as if it had been a question of proceeding to the Pillars ofHercules. Athens, which ran the risk of falling into the enemy's handsfor the second time through these hesitations, evinced such markeddispleasure that Mardonius momentarily attempted to take advantage ofit. He submitted to the citizens, through Alexander, King of Macedon, certain conditions, the leniency of which gave uneasiness to theSpartans; the latter at once promised Athens all she wanted, and on thestrength of their oaths she at once broke off the negotiations with thePersians. Mardonius immediately resolved on action: he left his quartersin Thessaly in the early days of May, reached Attica by a fewquick marches, and spread his troops over the country before thePeloponnesians were prepared to resist. The people again took refuge inSalamis; the Persians occupied Athens afresh, and once more had recourseto diplomacy. This time the Spartans were alarmed to good purpose; theyset out to the help of their ally, and from that moment Mardonius showedno further consideration in his dealing with Athens. He devastated thesurrounding country, razed the city walls to the ground, and demolishedand burnt the remaining houses and temples; he then returned to Boeotia, the plains of which were more suited to the movements of his squadrons, and took up a position in an entrenched camp on the right bank of theAsopos. The Greek army, under the command of Pausanias, King of Sparta, subsequently followed him there, and at first stationed themselves onthe lower slopes of Mount Cithseron. Their force was composed of about25, 000 hoplites, and about as many more light troops, and was scarcelyinferior in numbers to the enemy, but it had no cavalry of any kind. Several days passed in skirmishing without definite results, Mardoniusfearing to let his Asiatic troops attack the heights held by the heavyGreek infantry, and Pausanias alarmed lest his men should be crushed bythe Thessalian and Persian horse if he ventured down into the plains. Want of water at length obliged the Greeks to move slightly westwards, their right wing descending as far as the spring of Gargaphia, and theirleft to the bank of the Asopos. But this position facing east, exposedthem so seriously to the attacks of the light Asiatic horse, that afterenduring it for ten days they raised their camp and fell back in thenight on Platęa. Unaccustomed to manouvre together, they were unableto preserve their distances; when day dawned, their lines, insteadof presenting a continuous front, were distributed into three unequalbodies occupying various parts of the plain. Mardonius unhesitatinglyseized his opportunity. He crossed the Asopos, ordered the Thebans toattack the Athenians, and with the bulk of his Asiatic troops chargedthe Spartan contingents. Here, as at Marathon, the superiority ofequipment soon gave the Greeks the advantage: Mardonius was killed whileleading the charge of the Persian guard, and, as is almost always thecase among Orientals, his death decided the issue of the battle. TheImmortals were cut to pieces round his dead body, while the rest tookflight and sought refuge in their camp. [Illustration: 238. Jpg MAP] [Illustration: 239. Jpg THE BATTLE-FIELD OF PLATAEA] Almost simultaneously the Athenians succeeded in routing the Boeotians. They took the entrenchments by assault, gained possession of an immensequantity of spoil, and massacred many of the defenders, but they couldnot prevent Artabazus from retiring in perfect order with 40, 000 ofhis best troops protected by his cavalry. He retired successively fromThessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, reached Asia after suffering severelosses, and European Greece was freed for ever from the presence of thebarbarians. While her fate was being decided at Platsę, that of AsiaticGreece was being fought out on the coast of Ionia. The entreaties of theSamians had at length encouraged Leotychidas and Xanthippus to take theinitiative. The Persian generals, who were not expecting this aggressivemovement, had distributed the greater part of their vessels throughoutthe Ionian ports, and had merely a small squadron left at their disposalat Mycale. Surprised by the unexpected appearance of the enemy, theywere compelled to land, were routed, and their vessels burnt (479). Thisconstituted the signal for a general revolt: Samos, Chios, and Lesbosaffiliated themselves to the Hellenic confederation, and the cities ofthe littoral, which Sparta would have been powerless to protect for wantof a fleet, concluded an alliance with Athens, whose naval superiorityhad been demonstrated by recent events. The towns of the Hellespontthrew off the yoke as soon as the triremes of the confederates appearedwithin their waters, and Sestos, the only one of them prevented by itsPersian garrison from yielding to the Athenians, succumbed, after a longsiege, during the winter of 479-478. The campaign of 478 completed thedeliverance of the Greeks. A squadron commanded by Pausanias roused theislands of the Carian coast and Cyprus itself, without encounteringany opposition, and then steering northwards drove the Persians fromByzantium. The following winter the conduct of operations passed out ofthe hands of Sparta into those of Athens--from the greatest military tothe greatest naval power in Greece; and the latter, on assuming command, at once took steps to procure the means which would enable her to carry, out her task thoroughly. She brought about the formation of a permanentleague between the Asiatic Greeks and those of the islands. Each cityjoining it preserved a complete autonomy as far as its internal affairswere concerned, but pledged itself to abide by the advice of Athensin everything connected with the war against the Persian empire, andcontributed a certain quota of vessels, men, and money, calculatedaccording to its resources, for the furtherance of the national cause. The centre of the confederation was fixed at Delos; the treasure heldin common was there deposited under the guardianship of the god, and thedelegates from the confederate states met there every year at the solemnfestivals, Athens to audit the accounts of her administration, andthe allies to discuss the interests of the league and to decide on themeasures to be taken against the common enemy. Oriental empires maintain their existence only on condition of beingalways on the alert and always victorious. They can neither restrictthemselves within definite limits nor remain upon the defensive, forfrom the day when they desist from extending their area their ruinbecomes inevitable; they must maintain their career of conquest, or theymust cease to exist. This very activity which saves them from downfalldepends, like the control of affairs, entirely on the ruling sovereign;when he chances to be too indolent or too incapable of government, heretards progress by his inertness or misdirects it through his want ofskill, and the fate of the people is made thus to depend entirely on thenatural disposition of the prince, since none of his subjects possessessufficient authority to correct the mistakes of his master. Havingconquered Asia, the Persian race, finding itself hemmed in byinsurmountable obstacles--the sea, the African and Arabian deserts, themountains of Turkestan and the Caucasus, and the steppes of Siberia--hadonly two outlets for its energy, Greece and India. Darius had ledhis army against the Greeks, and, in spite of the resistance he hadencountered from them, he had gained ground, and was on the point ofstriking a crucial blow, when death cut short his career. The impetusthat he had given to the militant policy was so great that Xerxes wasat first carried away by it; but he was naturally averse to war, withoutindividual energy and destitute of military genius, so that he allowedhimself to be beaten where, had he possessed anything of the instinctsof a commander, he would have been able to crush his adversary with thesheer weight of his ships and battalions. Even after Salamis, even afterPlatęa and Mycale, the resources of Hellas, split up as it was intofifty different republics, could hardly bear comparison with thoseof all Asia concentrated in the hands of one man: Xerxes must havetriumphed in the end had he persevered in his undertaking, and utilisedthe inexhaustible amount of fresh material with which his empire couldhave furnished him. But to do that he would have had to take a seriousview of his duties as a sovereign, as Cyrus and Darius had done, whereashe appears to have made use of his power merely for the satisfaction ofhis luxurious tastes and his capricious affections. During the winterfollowing his return, and while he was reposing at Sardes after thefatigues of his campaign in Greece, he fell in love with the wife ofMasistes, one of his brothers, and as she refused to entertain his suit, he endeavoured to win her by marrying his son Darius to her daughterArtayntas. He was still amusing himself with this ignoble intrigueduring the year which witnessed the disasters of Platęa and Mycale, whenhe was vaguely entertaining the idea of personally conducting a fresharmy beyond the Ęgean: but the marriage of his son having taken place, he returned to Susa in the autumn, accompanied by the entire court, andfrom thenceforward he remained shut up in the heart of his empire. Afterhis departure the war lost its general character, and deteriorated intoa series of local skirmishes between the satraps in the vicinity of theMediterranean and the members of the league of Delos. The Phoenicianfleet played the principal part in the naval operations, but thecentral and eastern Asiatics--Bactrians, Indians, Parthians, Arians, Arachosians, Armenians, and the people from Susa and Babylon--scarcelytook any part in the struggle. The Athenians at the outset assumed theoffensive under the intelligent direction of Cimon. They expelled thePersian garrisons from Eion and Thrace in 476. They placed successivelyunder their own hegemony all the Greek communities of the Asianiclittoral. Towards 466, they destroyed a fleet anchored within the Gulfof Pamphylia, close to the mouth of the Eurymedon, and, as at Mycale, they landed and dispersed the force destined to act in concert withthe squadron. Sailing from thence to Cyprus, they destroyed a secondPhoenician fleet of eighty vessels, and returned to the Piraeus ladenwith booty. Such exploits were not devoid of glory and profit forthe time being, but they had no permanent results. All these navalexpeditions were indeed successful, and the islands and towns of theĘgean, and even those of the Black Sea and the southern coasts of AsiaMinor, succeeded without difficulty in freeing themselves from thePersian yoke under the protection of the Athenian triremes; but theirinfluence did not penetrate further inland than a few miles from theshore, beyond which distance they ran the risk of being cut off fromtheir vessels, and the barbarians of the interior--Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Pamphylians, and even most of the Lycians and Carians--remainedsubject to the rule of the satraps. The territory thus liberated formedbut a narrow border along the coast of the peninsula; a border rent andinterrupted at intervals, constantly in peril of seizure by the enemy, and demanding considerable efforts every year for its defence. Athenswas in danger of exhausting her resources in the performance of thisungrateful task, unless she could succeed in fomenting some revolutionin the vast possessions of her adversary which should endanger theexistence of his empire, or which, at any rate, should occupy thePersian soldiery in constantly recurring hostilities against therebellious provinces. If none of the countries in the centre of AsiaMinor would respond to their call, and if the interests of theircommercial rivals, the Phoenicians, were so far opposed to their own asto compel them to maintain the conflict to the very end, Egypt, at anyrate, always proud of her past glory and impatient of servitude, was ever seeking to rid herself of the foreign yoke and recover herindependent existence under, the authority of her Pharaohs. It was noteasy to come to terms with her and give her efficient help from Athensitself; but Cyprus, with its semi-Greek population hostile to theAchęmenids, could, if they were to take possession of it, form anadmirable base of operations in that corner of the Mediterranean. TheAthenians were aware of this from the outset, and, after their victoryat the mouth of the Eurymedon, a year never elapsed without theirdespatching a more or less numerous fleet into Cypriot waters; by sodoing they protected the Ęgean from the piracy of the Phoenicians, andat the same time, in the event of any movement arising on the banks ofthe Nile, they were close enough to the Delta to be promptly informedof it, and to interfere to their own advantage before any repressivemeasures could be taken. The field of hostilities having shifted, and Greece having now setherself to attempt the dismemberment of the Persian empire, we may wellask what has become of Xerxes. The little energy and intelligence hehad possessed at the outset were absorbed by a life of luxury anddebauchery. Weary of his hopeless pursuit of the wife of Masistes, he transferred his attentions to the Artayntas whom he had given inmarriage to his son Darius, and succeeded in seducing her. The vanityof this unfortunate woman at length excited the jealously of the queen. Amestris believed herself threatened by the ascendency of this mistress;she therefore sent for the girl's mother, whom she believed guilty ofinstigating the intrigue, and, having cut off her breasts, ears, nose, lips, and torn out her tongue, she sent her back, thus mutilated, to herfamily. Masistes, wishing to avenge her, set out for Bactriana, of whichdistrict he was satrap: he could easily have incited the province torebel, for its losses in troops during the wars in Europe had beensevere, and a secret discontent was widespread; but Xerxes, warned intime, despatched horsemen in pursuit, who overtook and killed him. Theincapacity of the king, and the slackness with which he held the reinsof government', were soon so apparent as to produce intrigues at court:Artabanus, the chief captain of the guards, was emboldened by thestate of affairs to attempt to substitute his own rule for that ofthe Achęmenids, and one night he assassinated Xerxes. His method ofprocedure was never exactly known, and several accounts of it were soonafterwards current. One of them related that he had as his accomplicethe eunuch Aspamithres. Having committed the crime, both of them rushedto the chamber of Artaxerxes, * one of the sons of the sovereign, butstill a child; they accused Darius, the heir to the throne, of themurder, and having obtained an order to seize him, they dragged himbefore his brother and stabbed him, while he loudly protested hisinnocence. * Artaxerxes is the form commonly adopted by the Greek historians and by the moderns who follow them, but Ctcsias and others after him prefer Artoxerxes. The original form of the Persian name was Artakhshathra. [Illustration: 247. Jpg Artaxerxes] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a daric in the _Cabinet des Médailles_. Other tales related that Artabanus had taken advantage of the freeaccess to the palace which his position allowed him, to conceal himselfone night within it, in company with his seven sons. Having murderedXerxes, he convinced Artaxerxes of the guilt of his brother, andconducting him to the latter's chamber, where he was found asleep, Artabanus stabbed him on the spot, on the pretence that he was onlyfeigning slumber. * * Of the two principal accounts, the first is as old as Ctesias, who was followed in general outline by Ephorus, of whose account Diodorus Siculus preserves a summary compilation; the second was circulated by Dinon, and has come down to us through the abbreviation of Pompeius Trogus. The remains of a third account are met with in Aristotle. Ęlian knew a fourth in which the murder was ascribed to the son of Xerxes himself. The murderer at first became the virtual sovereign, and he exercised hisauthority so openly that later chronographers inserted his name in thelist of the Achęmenids, between that of his victim and his _protégé_;but at the end of six months, when he was planning the murder of theyoung prince, he was betrayed by Megabyzos and slain, together with hisaccomplices. His sons, fearing a similar fate, escaped into the countrywith some of the troops. They perished in a skirmish, sword in hand; buttheir prompt defeat, though it helped to establish the new king upon histhrone, did not ensure peace, for the most turbulent provinces at thetwo extremes of the empire, Bactriana on the northeast and Egypt in thesouth-west, at once rose in arms. The Bactrians were led by Hystaspes, one of the sons of Xerxes, who, being older than Artaxerxes, claimedthe throne; his pretensions were not supported by the neighbouringprovinces, and two bloody battles soon sealed his fate (462). * Thechastisement of Egypt proved a harder task. Since the downfall of theSaites, the eastern nomes of the Delta had always constituted a singlefief, which the Greeks called the kingdom of Libya. Lords of Marea andof the fertile districts extending between the Canopic arm of the Nile, the mountains, and the sea, its princes probably exercised suzeraintyover several of the Libyan tribes of Marmarica. Inaros, son ofPsammetichus, ** who was then the ruling sovereign, defied the Persiansopenly. The inhabitants of the Delta, oppressed by the tax-gatherers ofAchęmenes, *** welcomed him with open arms, and he took possession ofthe country between the two branches of the Nile, probably aided by theCyrenians; the Nile valley itself and Memphis, closely guarded by thePersian garrisons, did not, however, range themselves on his side. * The date 462 is approximate, and is inferred from the fact that the war in Bactriana is mentioned in Ctesias between the war against the sons of Artabanus which must have occupied a part of 463, and the Egyptian rebellion which broke out about 462, as Diodorus Siculus points out, doubtless following Ephorus. ** The name of the father of Inaros is given us by the contemporary testimony of Thucydides. *** Achomenes is the form given by Herodotus and by Diodorus Siculus, who make him the son of Darius I. , appointed governor of Egypt after the repression of the revolt of Khabbīsha. Ctesias calls him Achęmenides, and says that he was the son of Xerxes. Meanwhile the satrap, fearing that the troops at his disposal wereinsufficient, had gone to beg assistance of his nephew. Artaxerxes hadassembled an army and a fleet, and, in the first moment of enthusiasm, had intended to assume the command in person; but, by the advice of hiscounsellors, he was with little difficulty dissuaded from carrying thiswhim into effect, and he delegated the conduct of affairs to Achęmenes. The latter at first repulsed the Libyans (460), and would probablyhave soon driven them back into their deserts, had not the Atheniansinterfered in the fray. They gave orders to their fleet at Cyprusto support the insurgents by every means in their power, and theirappearance on the scene about the autumn of 469 changed the courseof affairs. Achęmenes was overcome at Papremis, and his army almostcompletely exterminated. Inaros struck him down with his own hand in thestruggle; but the same evening he caused the body to be recovered, andsent it to the court of Susa, though whether out of bravado, or fromrespect to the Achęmenian race, it is impossible to say. * * Diodorus Siculus says in so many words that the Athenians took part in the battle of Papremis; Thucydides and Herodotus do not speak of their being there, and several modern historians take this silence as a proof that their squadron arrived after the battle had been fought. His good fortune did not yet forsake him. Some days afterwards, theAthenian squadron of Charitimides came up by chance with the Phoenicianfleet, which was sailing to the help of the Persians, and had not yetreceived the news of the disaster which had befallen them at Papremis. The Greeks sunk thirty of the enemy's vessels and took twenty more, and, after this success, the allies believed that they had merely to showthemselves to bring about a general rising of the fellahīn, and effectthe expulsion of the Persians from the whole of Egypt. They sailed upthe river and forced Memphis after a few days' siege; but the garrisonof the White Wall refused to surrender, and the allies were obliged tolay siege to it in the ordinary manner (459):* in the issue this provedtheir ruin. Artaxerxes raised a fresh force in Cilicia, and whilecompleting his preparations, attempted to bring about a diversion inGreece. The strength of Pharaoh did not so much depend on his Libyan andEgyptian hordes, as on the little body of hoplites and the crews ofthe Athenian squadron; and if the withdrawal of the latter could beeffected, the repulse of the others would be a certainty. Persian agentswere therefore employed to beg the Spartans to invade Attica; but theremembrance of Salamis and Platęa was as yet too fresh to permit of theLacedęmonians allying themselves with the common enemy, and their virtueon this occasion was proof against the darics of the Orientals. ** TheEgyptian army was placed in the field early in the year 456, under theleadership of Megabyzos, the satrap of Syria: it numbered, so it wassaid, some 300, 000 men, and it was supported by 300 Phoenician vesselscommanded by Artabazos. *** * The date of 459-8 for the arrival of the Athenians is concluded from the passage of Thucydides, who gives an account of the end of the war after the cruise of Tolmides in 455, in the sixth year of its course. ** Megabyzos opened these negotiations, and his presence at Sparta during the winter of 457-6 is noticed. *** Ctesias here introduces the Persian admiral Horiscos, but Diodorus places Artabazos and Megabyzos side by side, as was the case later on in the war in Cyprus, one at the head of the fleet, the other of the army; it is probable that the historian from whom Diodorus copied, viz. Ephorus, recognised the same division of leadership in the Egyptian campaign. The allies raised the blockade of the White Wall as soon as heentered the Delta, and hastened to attack him; but they had lost theiropportunity. Defeated in a desperate encounter, in which Charitimideswas killed and Inaros wounded in the thigh, they barricaded themselveswithin the large island of Prosopitis, about the first fortnight inJanuary of the year 455, and there sustained a regular siege for thespace of eighteen months. At the end of that time Megabyzos succeeded inturning an arm of the river, which left their fleet high and dry, and, rather than allow it to fall into his hands, they burned their vessels, whereupon he gave orders to make the final assault. The bulk of theAthenian auxiliaries perished in that day's attack, the remainderwithdrew with Inaros into the fortified town of Byblos, where Megabyzos, unwilling to prolong a struggle with a desperate enemy, permitted themto capitulate on honourable terms. Some of them escaped and returned toCyrene, from whence they took ship to their own country; but the mainbody, to the number of 6000, were carried away to Susa by Megabyzos inorder to receive the confirmation of the treaty which he had concluded. As a crowning stroke of misfortune, a reinforcement of fifty Atheniantriremes, which at this juncture entered the Mendesian mouth of theNile, was surrounded by the Phoenician fleet, and more than half of themdestroyed. The fall of Prosopitis brought the rebellion to an end. * * The accounts of these events given by Ctesias and Thucydides are complementary, and, in spite of their brevity, together form a whole which must be sufficiently near the truth. That of Ephorus, preserved in Diodorus, is derived from an author who shows partiality to the Athenians, and who passes by everything not to their honour, while he seeks to throw the blame for the final disaster on the cowardice of the Egyptians. The summary of Aristodemus comes directly from that of Thucydides. The nomes of the Delta were restored to order, and, as was oftencustomary in Oriental kingdoms, the vanquished petty princes or theirchildren were reinvested in their hereditary fiefs; even Libya was nottaken from the family of Inaros, but was given to his son Thannyras anda certain Psammetichus. A few bands of fugitives, however, took refugein the marshes of the littoral, in the place where the Saites in formertimes had sought a safe retreat, and they there proclaimed king acertain Amyrtgeus, who was possibly connected with the line of Amasis, and successfully defied the repeated attempts of the Persians todislodge them. The Greek league had risked the best of its forces in this rashundertaking, and had failed in its enterprise. It had cost the allies sodearly in men and galleys, that if the Persians had at once assumed theoffensive, most of the Asiatic cities would have found themselves in amost critical situation; and Athens, then launched in a quarrel withthe states of the Peloponnesus, would have experienced the greatestdifficulty in succouring them. The feebleness of Artaxerxes, however, and possibly the intrigues at court and troubles in various other partsof the empire, prevented the satraps from pursuing their advantage, andwhen at length they meditated taking action, the opportunity had goneby. They nevertheless attempted to regain the ascendency over Cyprus;Artabazos with a Sidonian fleet cruised about the island, Megabyzosassembled troops in Cilicia, and the petty kings of Greek origin raiseda cry of alarm. Athens, which had just concluded a truce with thePeloponnesians, at once sent two hundred vessels to their assistanceunder the command of Oimon (449). Cimon acted as though he were aboutto reopen the campaign in Egypt and despatched sixty of his triremes toKing Amyrtceus, while he himself took Marion and blockaded Kition withthe rest of his forces. The siege dragged on; he was perhaps about toabandon it, when he took to his bed and died. Those who succeeded him inthe command were obliged to raise the blockade for want of provisions, but as they returned and were passing Salamis, they fell in with thePhoenician vessels which had just been landing the Cilician troops, anddefeated them; they then disembarked, and, as at Mycale and Eurymedon, they gained a second victory in the open field, after which they joinedthe squadron which had been sent to Egypt, and sailed for Athens withthe dead body of their chief. They had once more averted the danger ofan attack on the Ęgean, but that was all. The Athenian statesmen hadfor some time past realised that it was impossible for them to sustaina double conflict, and fight the battles of Greece against the commonenemy, while half of the cities whose safety was secured by their heroicdevotion were harassing them on the continent, but the influence ofCimon had up till now encouraged them to persist; on the death of Cimon, they gave up the attempt, and Callias, one of their leaders, repaired instate to Susa for the purpose of opening negotiations. The peace whichwas concluded on the occasion of this embassy might at first sightappear advantageous to their side. The Persian king, without actuallyadmitting his reverses, accepted their immediate consequences. Herecognised the independence of the Asiatic Creeks, of those at least whobelonged to the league of Delos, and he promised that his armies onland should never advance further than three days' march from the Ęgeanlittoral. On the seas, he forbade his squadrons to enter Hellenic watersfrom the Chelidonian to the Cyanęan rocks--that is, from the easternpoint of Lycia to the opening of the Black Sea: this prohibition didnot apply to the merchant vessels of the contracting parties, andthey received permission to traffic freely in each other's waters--thePhoenicians in Greece, and the Greeks in Phonicia, Cilicia, and Egypt. And yet, when we consider the matter, Athens and Hellas were, of thetwo, the greater losers by this convention, which appeared to implytheir superiority. Not only did they acknowledge indirectly that theyfelt themselves unequal to the task of overthrowing the empire, butthey laid down their arms before they had accomplished the comparativelyrestricted task which they had set themselves to perform, that offreeing all the Greeks from the Iranian yoke: their Egyptian compatriotsstill remained Persian tributaries, in company with the cities ofCyrenaļca, Pamphylia, and Cilicia, and, above all, that island ofCyprus in which they had gained some of their most signal triumphs. The Persians, relieved from a war which for a quarter of a century hadconsumed their battalions and squadrons, drained their finances, andexcited their subjects to revolt, were now free to regain their formerwealth and perhaps their vigour, could they only find generals tocommand their troops and guide their politics. Artaxerxes was incapableof directing this revival, and his inveterate weakness exposed himperpetually to the plotting of his satraps or to the intrigues ofthe women of his harem. The example of Artabanus, followed by that ofHystaspes, had shown how easy it was for an ambitious man to get ridsecretly of a monarch or a prince and seriously endanger the crown. Themembers of the families who had placed Darius on the throne, possessedby hereditary right, or something little short of it, the wealthiestand most populous provinces--Babylonia, Syria, Lydia, Phrygia, and thecountries of the Halys--and they were practically kings in all but name, in spite of the _surveillance_ which the general and the secretary weresupposed to exercise over their actions. Besides this, the indifferenceand incapacity of the ruling sovereigns had already tended to destroythe order of the administrative system so ably devised by Darius: thesatrap had, as a rule, absorbed the functions of a general within hisown province, and the secretary was too insignificant a personageto retain authority and independence unless he received the constantsupport of the sovereign. The latter, a tool in the hands of women andeunuchs, usually felt himself powerless to deal with his great vassals. His toleration went to all lengths if he could thereby avoid a revolt;when this was inevitable, and the rebels were vanquished, he stillcontinued to conciliate them, and in most cases their fiefs and rightswere preserved or restored to them, the monarch knowing that he couldrid himself of them treacherously by poison or the dagger in the caseof their proving themselves too troublesome. Megabyzos by his turbulencewas a thorn in the side of Artaxerxes during the half of his reign. Hehad ended his campaign in Egypt by engaging to preserve the lives ofInaros and the 6000 Greeks who had capitulated at Byblos, and, in spiteof the anger of the king, he succeeded in keeping his word for fiveyears, but at the end of that time the demands of Amestris prevailed. She succeeded in obtaining from him some fifty Greeks whom she beheaded, besides Inaros himself, whom she impaled to avenge Achęmenes. Megabyzos, who had not recovered from the losses he had sustained in his lastcampaign against Cimon, at first concealed his anger, but he askedpermission to visit his Syrian province, and no sooner did he reach it, than he resorted to hostilities. He defeated in succession Usiris andMenostates, the two generals despatched against him, and when forcefailed to overcome his obstinate resistance, the government condescendedto treat with him, and swore to forget the past if he would consentto lay down arms. To this he agreed, and reappeared at court; but oncethere, his confidence nearly proved fatal to him. Having been invited totake part in a hunt, he pierced with his javelin a lion which threatenedto attack the king: Artaxerxes called to mind an ancient law whichpunished by death any intervention of that kind, and he ordered thatthe culprit should be beheaded. Megabyzos with difficulty escaped thispunishment through the entreaties of Amestris and of his wife Amytis;but he was deprived of his fiefs, and sent to Kyrta, on the shores ofthe Persian Gulf. After five years this exile became unbearable; hetherefore spread the report that he was attacked by leprosy, and hereturned home without any one venturing to hinder him, from fear ofdefiling themselves by contact with his person. Amestris and Amytisbrought about his reconciliation with his sovereign; and thenceforwardhe regulated his conduct so successfully that the past was completelyforgotten, and when he died, at the age of seventy-six years, Artaxerxesdeeply regretted his loss. * * These events are known to us only through Ctesias. Their date is uncertain, but there is no doubt that they occurred after Cimon's campaign in Cyprus and the conclusion of the peace of Callias. Peace having been signed with Athens, and the revolt of Megabyzos beingat an end, Artaxerxes was free to enjoy himself without further carefor the future, and to pass his time between his various capitals andpalaces. [Illustration: 258. Jpg VIEW OF THE ACHAEMENIAN RUINS OF ISTAKHR] Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving of Flandin and Coste. His choice lay between Susa and Persepolis, between Ecbatana andBabylon, according as the heat of the summer or the cold of the winterinduced him to pass from the plains to the mountains, or from the latterto the plains. During his visits to Babylon he occupied one of theold Chaldęan palaces, but at Ecbatana he possessed merely the ancientresidence of the Median kings, and the seraglio built or restored byXerxes in the fashion of the times: at Susa and in Persia proper, theroyal buildings were entirely the work of the Achęmenids, mostly thatof Darius and Xerxes. The memory of Cyrus and of the kings to whomprimitive Persia owed her organisation in the obscure century precedingher career of conquest, was piously preserved in the rude buildings ofPasargadę, which was regarded as a sacred city, whither the sovereignsrepaired for coronation as soon as their predecessors had expired. But its lonely position and simple appointments no longer suited theirluxurious and effeminate habits, and Darius had in consequence fixedhis residence a few miles to the south of it, near to the village, whichafter its development became the immense royal city of Persepolis. Hethere erected buildings more suited to the splendour of his court, andfound the place so much to his taste during his lifetime, that he wasunwilling to leave it after death. He therefore caused his tomb to becut in the steep limestone cliff which borders the plain about half amile to the north-west of the town. It is an opening in the form of aGreek cross, the upper part of which contains a bas-relief in which theking, standing in front of the altar, implores the help of Ahura-mazdāpoised with extended wings above him; the platform on which the kingstands is supported by two rows of caryatides in low relief, whosefeatures and dress are characteristic of Persian vassals, while otherpersonages, in groups of three on either side, are shown in the attitudeof prayer. Below, in the transverse arms of the cross, is carved a flatportico with four columns, in the centre of which is the entrance tothe funeral vault. Within the latter, in receptacles hollowed out of therock, Darius and eight of his family were successively laid. Xerxes caused a tomb in every way similar to be cut for himself nearthat of Darius, and in the course of years others were added close by. * * The tomb of Darius alone bears an inscription. Darius III. Was also buried there by command of Alexander. [Illustration: 260. Jpg THE TOMB OF DARIUS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the heliogravure by Marcel Dieulafoy. Both the tombs and the palace are built in that eclectic style whichcharacterises the Achęmenian period of Iranian art. The main featuresare borrowed from the architecture of those nations which were vassalsor neighbours of the empire--Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece; but thesevarious elements have been combined and modified in such a manner as toform a rich and harmonious whole. [Illustration: 261. Jpg THE HILL OF THE ROYAL ACHAEMENIAN TOMBS ATNAKUSH-I-RUSTEM] Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving of Flandin and Coste. The core of the walls was of burnt bricks, similar to those employed inthe Euphrates valley, but these were covered with a facing of enamelledtiles, disposed as a skirting or a frieze, on which figured thosewonderful processions of archers, and the lions which now adorn theLouvre, while the pilasters at the angles, the columns, pillars, window-frames, and staircases were of fine white limestone or of hardbluish-grey marble. [Illustration: 262. Jpg ONE OF THE CAPITALS FROM SUSA] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph taken in the Louvre by Faucher-Gudin. [Illustration: 262b. Jpg FREIZE OF ARCHERS AT SUZA] [Illustration: 263. Jpg GENERAL RUINS OF PERSIPOLIS] The doorways are high and narrow; the moulding which frames themis formed of three Ionic fillets, each projecting beyond the other, surmounted by a coved Egyptian lintel springing from a row of alternateeggs and disks. The framing of the doors is bare, but the embrasures arecovered with bas-reliefs representing various scenes in which the kingis portrayed fulfilling his royal functions--engaged in struggles withevil genii which have the form of lions or fabulous animals, occupied inhunting, granting audiences, or making an entrance in state, shaded byan umbrella which is borne by a eunuch behind him. The columns employedin this style of architecture constitute its most original feature. The base of them usually consists of two mouldings, resting either ona square pedestal or on a cylindrical drum, widening out below into abell-like curve, and sometimes ornamented with several rows of invertedleaves. The shafts, which have forty-eight perpendicular ribs cut ontheir outer surface, are perhaps rather tall in proportion to theirthickness. They terminate in a group of large leaves, an evidentimitation of the Egyptian palm-leaf capital, from which spring a sort ofrectangular fluted die or abacus, flanked on either side with four rowsof volutes curved in opposite directions, generally two at the base andtwo at the summit. The heads and shoulders of two bulls, placed back toback, project above the volutes, and take the place of the usual abacusof the capital. The dimensions of these columns, their gracefulness, andthe distance at which they were placed from one another, prove that theysupported not a stone architrave, but enormous beams of wood, whichwere inserted between the napes of the bulls' necks, and upon which thejoists of the roof were superimposed. The palace of Persepolis, built byDarius after he had crushed the revolts which took place at the outsetof his reign, was situated at the foot of a chain of rugged mountainswhich skirt the plain on its eastern side, and was raised on anirregularly shaped platform or terrace, which was terminated by a wallof enormous polygonal blocks of masonry. The terrace was reached bya double flight of steps, the lateral walls of which are coveredwith bas-reliefs, representing processions of satellites, slaves, andtributaries, hunting scenes, fantastic episodes of battle, and lionsfighting with and devouring bulls. The area of the raised platform wasnot of uniform level, and was laid out in gardens, in the midst of whichrose the pavilions that served as dwelling-places. The reception-roomswere placed near the top of the flight of steps, and the more importantof them had been built under the two preceding kings. Those nearest tothe edge of the platform were the propylę of Xerxes--gigantic entranceswhose gateways were guarded on either side by winged bulls of Assyriantype; beyond these was the _apadana_, or hall of honour, where thesovereign presided in state at the ordinary court ceremonies. To theeast of the _apadana_, and almost in the centre of the raised terrace, rose the Hall of a Hundred Columns, erected by Darius, and used onlyon special occasions. Artaxerxes I. Seems to have had a particularaffection for Susa. It had found favour with his predecessors, and theyhad so frequently resided there, even after the building of Persepolis, that it had continued to be regarded as the real capital of the empireby other nations, whereas the Persian sovereigns themselves had soughtto make it rather an impregnable retreat than a luxurious residence. Artaxerxes built there an _apadana_ on a vaster scale than any hithertodesigned. [Illustration: 267. Jpg THE PROPYLAEA OF XERXES I. AT PERSEPOLIS] Drawn by Boudier, from the heliogravure of Marcel Dieulafoy. It comprised three colonnades, which, taken together, formed a rectanglemeasuring 300 feet by 250 feet on the two sides, the area beingapproximately that of the courtyard of the Louvre. The centralcolonnade, which was the largest of the three, was enclosed by walls onthree sides, but was open to the south. Immense festoons of drapery hungfrom the wooden entablature, and curtains, suspended from rods betweenthe first row of columns, afforded protection from the sun and from thecuriosity of the vulgar. [Illustration: 268. Jpg BAS-RELIEF OF THE STAIRCASE LEADING TO THEAPADANA OF XERXES] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Marcel Dieulafoy. At the hour appointed for the ceremonies, the great king took his seatin solitary grandeur on the gilded throne of the Achęmenids; at theextreme end of the colonnade his eunuchs, nobles, and guards rangedthemselves in silence on either side, each in the place which etiquetteassigned to him. Meanwhile the foreign ambassadors who had been honouredby an invitation to the audience--Greeks from Thebes, Sparta, or Athens;Sakae from the regions of the north; Indians, Arabs, nomad chiefs frommysterious Ethiopia-ascended in procession the flights of steps whichled from the town to the palace, bearing the presents destined for itsroyal master. [Illustration: 269. Jpg THE KING ON HIS THRONE] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Plandin and Coste. Having reached the terrace, the curtains of the _apadana_ were suddenlyparted, and in the distance, through a vista of columns, they perceiveda motionless figure, resplendent with gold and purple, before whomthey fell prostrate with their faces to the earth. The heralds werethe bearers of their greetings, and brought back to them a gracious orhaughty reply, as the case may be. When they rose from the ground, thecurtains had closed, the kingly vision was eclipsed, and the escortwhich had accompanied them into the palace conducted them back to thetown, dazzled with the momentary glimpse of the spectacle vouchsafed tothem. [Illustration: 270. Jpg A VIEW OF THE APADANA OF SUSA, RESTORED] Drawn by Boudier, from the restoration by Marcel Dieulafoy. The Achęemenian monarchs were not regarded as gods or as sons of gods, like the Egyptian Pharaohs, and the Persian religion forbade theirever becoming so, but the person of the king was hedged round with suchceremonial respect as in other Oriental nations was paid only to thegods: this was but natural, for was he not a despot, who with a wordor gesture could abase the noblest of his subjects, and determine thewell-being or misery of his people? His dress differed from that of hisnobles only by the purple dye of its material and the richness of thegold embroideries with which it was adorned, but he was distinguishedfrom all others by the peculiar felt cap, or _kidaris_, which he wore, and the blue-and-white band which encircled it like a crown; the kingis never represented without his long sceptre with pommelled handle, whether he be sitting or standing, and wherever he went he was attendedby his umbrella- and fan-bearers. The prescriptions of court etiquettewere such as to convince his subjects and persuade himself that he wassprung from a nobler race than that of any of his magnates, and that hewas outside the pale of ordinary humanity. The greater part of histime was passed in privacy, where he was attended only by the eunuchsappointed to receive his orders; and these orders, once issued, wereirrevocable, as was also the king's word, however much he might desireto recall a promise once made. His meals were, as a rule, served to himalone; he might not walk on foot beyond the precincts of the palace, andhe never showed himself in public except on horseback or in his chariot, surrounded by his servants and his guards. The male members of the royalfamily and those belonging to the six noble houses enjoyed the privilegeof approaching the king at any hour of the day or night, provided he wasnot in the company of one of his wives. These privileged persons formedhis council, which he convoked on important occasions, but all ordinarybusiness was transacted by means of the scribes and inferior officials, on whom devolved the charge of the various departments of thegovernment. A vigorous ruler, such as Darius had proved himself, certainly trusted no one but himself to read the reports sent in by thesatraps, the secretaries, and the generals, or to dictate the answersrequired by each; but Xerxes and Artaxerxes delegated the heaviest partof such business to their ministers, and they themselves only fulfilledsuch state functions as it was impossible to shirk--the publicadministration of justice, receptions of ambassadors or victoriousgenerals, distributions of awards, annual sacrifices, and statebanquets: they were even obliged, in accordance with an ancient andinviolable tradition, once a year to set aside their usual sober habitsand drink to excess on the day of the feast of Mithra. Occasionally theywould break through their normal routine of life to conduct in personsome expedition of small importance, directed against one of thesemi-independent tribes of Iran, such as the Cadusians, but theirmost glorious and frequent exploits were confined to the chase. Theydelighted to hunt the bull, the wild boar, the deer, the wild ass, andthe hare, as the Pharaohs or Assyrian kings of old had done; and theywould track the lion to his lair and engage him single-handed; in fact, they held a strict monopoly in such conflicts, a law which punished withdeath any huntsman who had the impertinence to interpose between themonarch and his prey being only abolished by Artaxerxes. A crowd ofmenials, slaves, great nobles, and priests filled the palace; grooms, stool-bearers, umbrella- and fan-carriers, _havasses_, "Immortals, "bakers, perfumers, soldiers, and artisans formed a retinue so numerousas to require a thousand bullocks, asses, and stags to be butcheredevery day for its maintenance; and when the king made a journey in fullstate, this enormous train looked like an army on the march. The womenof the royal harem lived in seclusion in a separate wing of the palace, or in isolated buildings erected in the centre of the gardens. Thelegitimate wives of the sovereign were selected from the ladies ofthe royal house, the sisters or cousins of the king, and from the sixprincely Persian families; but their number were never very large, usually three or four at most. * * Cambyses had had three wives, including his two sisters Atossa and Roxana. Darius had four wives--two daughters of Cyrus, Atossa and Artystōnź, Parmys daughter of Srnerdis, and a daughter of Otanes. The concubines, on the other hand, were chosen from all classes ofsociety, and were counted by hundreds. [Illustration: 273. Jpg PROCESSIONAL DISPLAY OF TRIBUTE BROUGHT TO THEKING OF PERSIA] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from plates in Flandin and Coste. They sang or played on musical instruments at the state banquets of thecourt, they accompanied their master to the battle-field or the chase, and probably performed the various inferior domestic duties in theinterior of the harem, such as spinning, weaving, making perfumes, andattending to the confectionery and cooking. Each of the king's wiveshad her own separate suite of apartments and special attendants, andoccupied a much higher position than a mere concubine; but only one wasactually queen and had the right to wear the crown, and this positionbelonged of right to a princess of Achę-menian race. Thus Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, was queen successively to Cambyses, Gaumāta, andDarius; Amestris to Xerxes; and Damaspia to Artaxerxes. Besides theinfluence naturally exerted by the queen over the mind of her husband, she often acquired boundless authority in the empire, in spite of hersecluded life. * * Thus Atossa induced Darius to designate Xerxes as his heir-apparent. Her power was still further increased when she became a widow, if thenew king happened to be one of her own sons. In such circumstances sheretained the external attributes of royalty, sitting at the royaltable whenever the king deigned to dine in the women's apartments, andeverywhere taking precedence of the young queen; she was attended by herown body of eunuchs, of whom, as well as of her private revenues, she had absolute control. Those whom the queen-mother took under herprotection escaped punishment, even though they richly deserved it, but the object of her hatred was doomed to perish in the end, either bypoison treacherously administered, or by some horrible form of torture, being impaled, suffocated in ashes, tortured in the trough, or flayedalive. Artaxerxes reigned for forty-two years, spending his time betweenthe pleasures of the chase and the harem; no serious trouble disturbedhis repose after his suppression of the revolt under Megabyzos, but onhis death in 424 B. C. There was a renewal of the intrigues and ambitiouspassions which had stained with bloodshed the opening years of hisreign. The legitimate heir, Xerxes II. , was assassinated, after a reignof forty-five days, by Secudianus (Sogdianus), one of his illegitimatebrothers, and the _cortčge_ which was escorting the bodies of hisparents conveyed his also to the royal burying-place at Persepolis. Meanwhile Secudianus became suspicious of another of his brothers, named Ochus, whom Artaxerxes had caused to marry Parysatis, one of thedaughters of Xerxes, and whom he had set over the important province ofHyrcania. Ochus received repeated summonses to appear in his brother'spresence to pay him homage, and at last obeyed the mandate, but arrivedat the head of an army. The Persian nobility rose at his approach, andone by one the chief persons of the state declared themselves in hisfavour: first Arbarius, commander of the cavalry; then Arxanes, thesatrap of Egypt; and lastly, the eunuch Artoxares, the ruler ofArmenia. These three all combined in urging Ochus to assume the _Edaris_publicly, which he, with feigned reluctance, consented to do, andproceeded, at the suggestion of Parysatis, to open negotiations withSecudianus, offering to divide the regal power with him. Secudianusaccepted the offer, against the advice of his minister Menostanes, andgave himself up into the hands of the rebels. He was immediately seizedand cast into the ashes, where he perished miserably, after a reign ofsix months and fifteen days. On ascending the throne, Ochus assumed the name of Darius. Hisconfidential advisers were three eunuchs, who ruled the empire in hisname--Artoxares, who had taken such a prominent part in the campaignwhich won him the crown, Artibarzanes, and Athōos; but the guidingspirit of his government was, in reality, his wife, the detestableParysatis. She had already borne him two children before she becamequeen; a daughter, Amestris, and a son, Arsaces, who afterwards becameking under the name of Artaxerxes. Soon after the accession of herhusband, she bore him a second son, whom she named Cyrus, in memoryof the founder of the empire, and a daughter, Artostź; several otherchildren were born subsequently, making thirteen in all, but these alldied in childhood, except one named Oxendras. Violent, false, jealous, and passionately fond of the exercise of power, Parysatis hesitated atno crime to rid herself of those who thwarted her schemes, even thoughthey might be members of her own family; and, not content with puttingthem out of the way, she delighted in making them taste her hatred tothe full, by subjecting them to the most skilfully graduated refinementsof torture; she deservedly left behind her the reputation of being oneof the most cruel of all the cruel queens, whose memory was a terror notonly to the harems of Persia, but to the whole of the Eastern world. The numerous revolts which broke out soon after her husband's accession, furnished occasions for the revelation of her perfidious cleverness. All the malcontents of the reign of Artaxerxes, those who hadbeen implicated in the murder of Xerxes II. , or who had sided withSecudianus, had rallied round a younger brother of Darius, namedArsites, and one of them, Artyphios, son of Megabyzos, took the field inAsia Minor. Being supported by a large contingent of Greek mercenaries, he won two successive victories at the opening of the campaign, but wassubsequently defeated, though his forces still remained formidable. ButPersian gold accomplished what Persian bravery had failed to achieve, and prevailed over the mercenaries so successfully that all deserted himwith the exception of three Milesians. [Illustration: 276. Jpg Darius II. ] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the coins in the _Cabinet des Médailles. _ Artyphios and Arsites, thus discouraged, committed the imprudence ofcapitulating on condition of receiving a promise that their lives shouldbe spared, and that they should be well treated; but Parysatis persuadedher husband to break his plighted word, and they perished in the ashes. Their miserable fate did not discourage the satrap of Lydia, Pissuthnes, who was of Achęmenian race: he entered the lists in 418 B. C. , with thehelp of the Athenians. The relations between the Persian empire andGreece had continued fairly satisfactory since the peace of 449B. C. , and the few outbreaks which had taken place had not led to anywidespread disturbance. The Athenians, absorbed in their quarrel withSparta, preferred to close their eyes to all side issues, lest thePersians should declare war against them, and the satraps of Asia Minor, fully alive to the situation, did not hesitate to take advantage of anypretext for recovering a part of the territory they coveted: it was thusthat they had seized Colophon about 430 B. C. , and so secured once more aport on the Ęgean. Darius despatched to oppose Pissuthnes a man of noblebirth, named Tissaphernes, giving him plenary power throughout the wholeof the peninsula, and Tissaphernes endeavoured to obtain by treacherythe success he would with difficulty have won on the field of battle: hecorrupted by his darics Lycon, the commander of the Athenian contingent, and Pissuthnes, suddenly abandoned by his best auxiliaries, was forcedto surrender at discretion. He also was suffocated in the ashes, andDarius bestowed his office on Tissaphernes. But the punishment of Pissuthnes did not put an end to the troubles:his son Amorges roused Caria to revolt, and with the title of kingmaintained his independence for some years longer. While these incidentswere taking place, the news of the disasters in Sicily reached the East:as soon as it was known in Susa that Athens had lost at Syracuse thebest part of her fleet and the choicest of her citizens, the moment wasdeemed favourable to violate the treaty and regain control of the wholeof Asia Minor. Two noteworthy men were at that time set over thewestern satrapies, Tissaphernes ruling at Sardes, and Tiribazus overHellespontine Phrygia. These satraps opened negotiations with Spartaat the beginning of 412 B. C. , and concluded a treaty with her atMiletus itself, by the terms of which the Peloponnesians recognised thesuzerainty of Darius over all the territory once held by his ancestorsin Asia, including the cities since incorporated into the Athenianleague. They hoped shortly to be strong enough to snatch from him whatthey now ceded, and to set free once more the Greeks whom they thuscondemned to servitude after half a century of independence, but theirexpectations were frustrated. The towns along the coast fell one afteranother into the power of Tissaphernes, Amorges was taken prisoner inlassos, and at the beginning of 411 B. C. There remained to the Atheniansin Ionia and Caria merely the two ports of Halicarnassus and Notium, andthe three islands of Cos, Samos, and Lesbos: from that time the power ofthe great king increased from year to year, and weighed heavily on thedestinies of Greece. Meanwhile Darius II. Was growing old, and intrigueswith regard to the succession were set on foot. Two of his sons putforward claims to the throne: Arsaces had seniority in his favour, buthad been born when his father was still a mere satrap; Cyrus, on thecontrary, had been born in the purple, and his mother Parysatiswas passionately devoted to him. * Thanks to her manouvres, he waspractically created viceroy of Asia Minor in 407 B. C. , with suchabundant resources of men and money at his disposal, that he wasvirtually an independent sovereign. While he was consolidating hispower in the west, his mother endeavoured to secure his accession to thethrone by intriguing at the court of the aged king; if her plans failed, Cyrus was prepared to risk everything by an appeal to arms. * Cyrus was certainly not more than seventeen years old in 407 B. C. , evening admitting that he was born immediately after his father's accession in 424-3 B. C. [Illustration: 279. Jpg CYRUS THE YOUNGER] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the coins in the _Cabinet des Médailles_. He realised that the Greeks would prove powerful auxiliaries in sucha contingency; and as soon as he had set up his court at Sardes, heplanned how best to conciliate their favour, or at least to win overthose whose support was likely to be most valuable. Athens, as amaritime power, was not in a position to support him in an enterprisewhich especially required the co-operation of a considerable force ofheavily armed infantry. He therefore deliberately espoused the causeof the Peloponnesians, and the support he gave them was not without itsinfluence on the issue of the struggle: the terrible day of Ęgos Potamoswas a day of triumph for him as much as for the Lacedaemonians (405B. C. ). His intimacy with Lysander, however, his constant enlistments ofmercenary troops, and his secret dealings with the neighbouringprovinces, had already aroused suspicion, and the satraps placed underhis orders, especially Tissaphernes, accused him to the king of treason. Darius summoned him to Susa to explain his conduct (405 B. C. ), and hearrived just in time to be present at his father's death (404), buttoo late to obtain his designation as heir to the throne through theintervention of his mother, Parysatis; Arsaces inherited the crown, andassumed the name of Artaxerxes. [Illustration: 280. Jpg ARTAXERXES MNEMON] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des Médailles. This coin, which was struck at Mallos, in Cilicia, bears as a counter-mark the figure of a bull and the name of the city of Issus. Cyrus entered the temple of Pasargadae surreptitiously during thecoronation ceremony, with the intention of killing his brother at thefoot of the altar; but Tissaphernes, warned by one of the priests, denounced him, and he would have been put to death on the spot, had nothis mother thrown her arms around him and prevented the executioner fromfulfilling his office. Having with difficulty obtained pardon and beensent back to his province, he collected thirty thousand Greeks and ahundred thousand native troops, and, hastily leaving Sardes (401 B. C. ), he crossed Asia Minor, Northern Syria, and Mesopotamia, encountered theroyal army at Cunaxa, to the north of Babylon, and rashly met his endat the very moment of victory. He was a brave, active, and generousprince, endowed with all the virtues requisite to make a good Orientalmonarch, and he had, moreover, learnt, through contact with the Greeks, to recognise the weak points of his own nation, and was fully determinedto remedy them: his death, perhaps, was an irreparable misfortune forhis country. Had he survived and supplanted the feeble Artaxerxes, it isquite possible that he might have confirmed and strengthened the powerof Persia, or, at least, temporarily have arrested its decline. Havinglost their leader, his Asiatic followers at once dispersed; but themercenaries did not lose heart, and, crossing Asia and Armenia, gainedat length the shores of the Black Sea. Up to that time the Greeks hadlooked upon Persia as a compact state, which they were sufficientlypowerful to conquer by sea and hold in check by land, but whichthey could not, without imprudence, venture to attack within its ownfrontiers. The experience of the Ten Thousand was a proof to them thata handful of men, deprived of their proper generals, without guides, money, or provisions, might successfully oppose the overwhelming forcesof the great king, and escape from his clutches without any seriousdifficulty. National discords prevented them from at once utilisingthe experience they thus acquired, but the lesson was not lost uponthe court of Susa. The success of Lysander had been ensured by Persiansubsidies, and now Sparta hesitated to fulfil the conditions of thetreaty of Miletus; the Lacedęmonians demanded liberty once more for theformer allies of Athens, fostered the war in Asia in order to enforcetheir claims, and their king Agesilaus, penetrating to the very heart ofPhrygia, would have pressed still further forward in the tracks of theTen Thousand, had not an opportune diversion been created in his rear bythe bribery of the Persians. Athens once more flew to arms: her fleet, in conjunction with the Phoenicians, took possession of Cythera; theLong Walls were rebuilt at the expense of the great king, and Sparta, recalled by these reverses to a realisation of her position, wiselyabandoned her inclination for distant enterprises. Asia Minor wasreconquered, and Persia passed from the position of a national enemyto that of the friend and arbiter of Greece; but she did so by force ofcircumstances only, and not from having merited in any way the supremacyshe attained. Her military energy, indeed, was far from being exhausted;but poor Artaxerxes, bewildered by the rivalries between his mother andhis wives, did not know how to make the most of the immense resourcesstill at his disposal, and he met with repeated checks as soon as hecame face to face with a nation and leaders who refused to stoop totreachery. He had no sooner recovered possession of the Ęgean littoralthan Egypt was snatched from his grasp by a new Pharaoh who had arisenin the Nile valley. The peace had not been seriously disturbed in Egyptduring the forty years which had elapsed since the defeat of Inarus. Satrap had peaceably succeeded satrap in the fortress of Memphis;the exhaustion of Libya had pre-vented any movement on the part ofThannyras; the aged Amyrtęus had passed from the scene, and his son, Pausiris, bent his neck submissively to the Persian yoke. More thanonce, however, unexpected outbursts had shown that the fires ofrebellion were still smouldering. A Psammetichus, who reigned about 445B. C. In a corner of the Delta, had dared to send corn and presents tothe Athenians, then at war with Artaxerxes I. , and the second year ofDarius II. Had been troubled by a sanguinary sedition, which, however, was easily suppressed by the governor then in power; finally, about410 B. C. , a king of Egypt had, not without some show of evidence, laid himself open to the charge of sending a piratical expedition intoPhoenician waters, an Arab king having contributed to the enterprise. * * The revolt mentioned by Ctesias has nothing to do with the insurrection of the satrap of Egypt which is here referred to, the date of which is furnished by the Syncellus. It was easy to see, moreover, from periodical revolts--such as that ofMegabyzos in Syria, those of Artyphios and Arsites, of Pissuthnes andAmorges in Asia Minor--with what impunity the wrath of the great kingcould be defied: it was not to be wondered at, therefore, that, about405 B. C. , an enemy should appear in the heart of the Delta in the personof a grandson and namesake of Amyrtęus. He did not at first rouse thewhole country to revolt, for Egyptian troops were still numbered in thearmy of Artaxerxes at the battle of Cunaxa in 401 B. C. ; but he succeededin establishing a regular native government, and struggled so resolutelyagainst the foreign domination that the historians of the sacredcolleges inscribed his name on the list of the Pharaohs. He is theremade to represent a whole dynasty, the XXVIIIth which lasted six years, coincident with the six years of his reign. It was due to a Mendesiandynasty, however, whose founder was Nephorites, that Egypt obtained itsentire freedom, and was raised once more to the rank of a nation. Thisdynasty from the very outset adopted the policy which had proved sosuccessful in the case of the Saites three centuries previously, andemployed it with similar success. Egypt had always been in the positionof a besieged fortress, which needed, for its complete security, thatits first lines of defence should be well in advance of its citadel: shemust either possess Syria or win her as an ally, if she desired to beprotected against all chance of sudden invasion. Nephorites and hissuccessors, therefore, formed alliances beyond the isthmus, and even onthe other side of the Mediterranean, with Cyprus, Caria, and Greece, inone case to purchase support, and in another to re-establish the ancientsupremacy exercised by the Theban Pharaohs. * * This is, at any rate, the idea given of him by Egyptian tradition in the time of the Ptolemies, as results from a passage in the _Demotic Rhapsody_, where his reign is mentioned. Every revolt against the Persians, every quarrel among the satraps, helped forward their cause, since they compelled the great king tosuspend his attacks against Egypt altogether or to prosecute them atwide intervals: the Egyptians therefore fomented such quarrels, or even, at need, provoked them, and played their game so well that for a longtime they had to oppose only a fraction of the Persian forces. Like theSaite Pharaohs before them, they were aware how little reliance couldbe placed on native troops, and they recruited their armies at greatexpense from the European Greeks. This occurred at the time whenmercenary forces were taking the place of native levies throughoutHellas, and war was developing into a lucrative trade for those whounderstood how to conduct it: adventurers, greedy for booty, flockedto the standards of the generals who enjoyed the best reputation forkindness or ability, and the generals themselves sold their servicesto the highest bidder. The Persian kings took large advantage of thisarrangement to procure troops: the Pharaohs imitated their example, andin the years which followed, the most experienced captains, Iphicrates, Chabrias, and Timotheus, passed from one camp to another, as oftenagainst the will as with the consent of their fatherland. The power ofSparta was at her zenith when Nephorites ascended the throne, and shewas just preparing for her expedition to Phrygia. The Pharaoh concludedan alliance with the Lacedomonians, and in 396 B. C. Sent to Agesilausa fleet laden with arms, corn, and supplies, which, however, wasintercepted by Conon, who was at that moment cruising in the directionof Rhodes in command of the Persian squadron. This misadventure and theabrupt retreat of the Spartans from Asia Minor cooled the good will ofthe Egyptian king towards his allies. Thinking that they had abandonedhim, and that he was threatened with an imminent attack on the shoreof the Delta, he assembled, probably at Pelusium, the forces he hadapparently intended for a distant enterprise. Matters took longer to come to a crisis than he had expected. Theretreat of Agesilaus had not pacified the Ęgean satrapies; after thedisturbance created by Cyrus the Younger, the greater number of thenative tribes--Mysians, Pisidians, people of Pontus and Paphlagonia--hadshaken off the Persian yoke, and it was a matter of no small difficultyto reduce them once more to subjection. Their incessant turbulence gaveEgypt time to breathe and to organise new combinations. Cyprus enteredreadily into her designs. Since the subjugation of that island in 445B. C. , the Greek cities had suffered terrible oppression at the hands ofthe great king. Artaxerxes I. , despairing of reducing them to obedience, depended exclusively for support on the Phoenician inhabitants of theisland, who, through his favour, regained so much vigour that in thespace of less than two generations they had recovered most of the groundlost during the preceding centuries: Semitic rulers replaced the Achaeantyrants at Salamis, and in most of the other cities, and Citium becamewhat it had been before the rise of Salamis, the principal commercialcentre in the island. Evagoras, a descendant of the ancient kings, endeavoured to retrieve the Grecian cause: after driving out of SalamisAbdemon, its Tyrian ruler, he took possession of all the other townsexcept Citium and Amathus. This is not the place to recount thebrilliant part played by Evagoras, in conjunction with Conon, during thecampaigns against the Spartans in the Peloponnesian war. The activity hethen displayed and the ambitious designs he revealed soon drew upon himthe dislike of the Persian governors and their sovereign; and from391 B. C. He was at open war with Persia. He would have been unable, single-handed, to maintain the struggle for any length of time, butEgypt and Greece were at his back, ready to support him with money orarms. Hakoris had succeeded Nephorites I. In 393 B. C. , * and had repulsedan attack of Artaxerxes between 390 and 386. ** * The length of the reign of Nephorites I. Is fixed at six years by the lists of Manetho; the last-known date of his reign is that of his fourth year, on a mummy-bandage preserved in the Louvre. ** This war is alluded to by several ancient authors in passages which have been brought together and explained by Judeah; but unfortunately the detailed history of the events is not known. He was not unduly exalted by his success, and had immediately taken wiseprecautions in view of a second invasion. After safeguarding his westernfrontier by concluding a treaty with the Libyans of Barca, he enteredinto an alliance with Evagoras and the Athenians. [Illustration: 287. Jpg HAKORIS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius. He sent lavish gifts of corn to the Cypriots, as well as munitions ofwar, ships, and money while Athens sent them several thousand men underthe command of Chabrias; not only did an expedition despatchedagainst them under Autophradates fail miserably, but Evagoras seizedsuccessively Citium and Amathus, and, actually venturing across the sea, took Tyre by assault and devastated Phoenicia and Cilicia. The princesof Asia Minor were already preparing for revolt, and one of them, Hecatomnus of Caria, had openly joined the allies, when Sparta suddenlyopened negotiations with Persia: Antalcidas presented himself at Susato pay homage before the throne of the great king. The treaty of Miletushad brought the efforts of Athens to naught, and sold the AsiaticGreeks to their oppressors: the peace obtained by Antalcidas effaced theresults of Salamis and Platsę, and laid European Greece prostrate atthe feet of her previously vanquished foes. An order issuing from thecentre of Persia commanded the cities of Greece to suspend hostilitiesand respect each other's liberties; the issuing of such an order wasequivalent to treating them as vassals whose quarrels it is the functionof the suzerain to repress, but they nevertheless complied with thecommand (387 B. C. ), Artaxerxes, relieved from anxiety for the moment, as to affairs on the Ęgean, was now free to send his best generals intothe rebel countries, and such was the course his ministers recommended. Evagoras was naturally the first to be attacked. Cyprus was, in fact, anoutpost of Egypt; commanding as she did the approach by sea, she was ina position to cut the communications of any army, which, issuing fromPalestine, should march upon the Delta. Artaxerxes assembled threehundred thousand foot-soldiers and three hundred triremes under thecommand of Tiribazus, and directed the whole force against the island. At first the Cypriot cruisers intercepted the convoys which werebringing provisions for this large force, and by so doing reduced theinvaders to such straits that sedition broke out in their camp; butEvagoras was defeated at sea off the promontory of Citium, andhis squadron destroyed. He was not in any way discouraged by thismisfortune, but leaving his son, Pnytagoras, to hold the barbarianforces in check, he hastened to implore the help of the Pharaoh (385B. C. ). But Hakoris was too much occupied with securing his own immediatesafety to risk anything in so desperate an enterprise. Evagoras wasable to bring back merely an insufficient subsidy; he shut himself upin Salamis, and there maintained the conflict for some years longer. Meanwhile Hakoris, realising that the submission of Cyprus would opposehis flank to attack, tried to effect a diversion in Asia Minor, and byentering into alliance with the Pisidians, then in open insurrection, heprocured for it a respite, of which he himself took advantage to preparefor the decisive struggle. The peace effected by Antalcidas had leftmost of the mercenary soldiers of Greece without employment. Hakorishired twenty thousand of them, and the Phoenician admirals, stilloccupied in blockading the ports of Cyprus, failed to intercept thevessels which brought him these reinforcements. It was fortunate forEgypt that they did so, for the Pharaoh died in 381 B. C. , and hissuccessors, Psamuthis IL, Mutis, and Nephorites IL, each occupied thethrone for a very short time, and the whole country was in confusion forrather more than two years (381-379 B. C. ) during the settlement of thesuccession. * * Hakoris reigned thirteen years, from 393 to 381 B. C. The reigns of the three succeeding kings occupied only two years and four months between them, from the end of 381 to the beginning of 378. Muthes or Mutis, who is not mentioned in all the lists of Manetho, seems to have his counterpart in the _Demotic Rhapsody_. Wiedemann has inverted the order usually adopted, and proposed the following series: Nephorites I. , Muthes, Psamuthis, Hakoris, Nephorites II. The discovery at Karnak of a small temple where Psamuthis mentions Hakoris as his predecessor shows that on this point at least Manetho was well informed. The turbulent disposition of the great feudatory nobles, which had sofrequently brought trouble upon previous Pharaohs during theAssyrian wars, was no less dangerous in this last century of Egyptianindependence; it caused the fall of the Mendesian dynasty in the veryface of the enemy, and the prince of Sebennytos, Nakht-har-habīt, Nectanebo I. , was raised to the throne by the military faction. According to a tradition current in Ptolemaic times, this sovereign wasa son of Nephorites I. , who had been kept out of his heritage by thejealousy of the gods; whatever his origin, the people had no causeto repent of having accepted him as their king. He began his reignby suppressing the slender subsidies which Evagoras had continued toreceive from his predecessors, and this measure, if not generous, wasat least politic. For Cyprus was now virtually in the power of thePersians, and the blockade of a few thousand men in Salamis did notdraught away a sufficiently large proportion of their effective force tobe of any service to Egypt: the money which had hitherto been devoted tothe Cypriots was henceforth reserved for the direct defence of the Nilevalley. Evagoras obtained unexpectedly favourable conditions: Artaxerxesconceded to him his title of king and the possession of his city (383B. C. ), and turned his whole attention to Nectanebo, the last of hisenemies who still held out. Nectanebo had spared no pains in preparing effectively to receive hisfoe. He chose as his coadjutor the Athenian Chabrias, whose capacity asa general had been manifested by recent events, and the latter acceptedthis office although he had received no instructions from his governmentto do so, and had transformed the Delta into an entrenched camp. He hadfortified the most vulnerable points along the coast, had built towersat each of the mouths of the river to guard the entrance, and hadselected the sites for his garrison fortresses so judiciously that theywere kept up long after his time to protect the country. Two of them arementioned by name: one, situated below Pelusium, called the Castle ofChabrias; the other, not far from Lake Mareotis, which was known as histownship. * * Both are mentioned by Strabo; the exact sites of these two places are not yet identified. Diodorus Siculus, describing the defensive preparations of Egypt, does not state expressly that they were the work of Chabrias, but this fact seems to result from a general consideration of the context. [Illustration: 291. Jpg PHARNABAZUS] Drawn by faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the _Cabinet des Médailles_. The Persian generals endeavoured to make their means of attackproportionate to the defences of the enemy. Acre was the only port inSouthern Syria large enough to form the rendezvous for a fleet, where itmight be secure from storms and surprises of the enemy. This was chosenas the Persian headquarters, and formed the base of their operations. During three years they there accumulated supplies of food and militarystores, Phoenician and Creek vessels, and both foreign and nativetroops. The rivalries between the military commanders, Tithraustes, Datāmes, and Abrocomas, and the intrigues of the court, had on severaloccasions threatened the ruin of the enterprise, but Pharnabazus, whofrom the outset had held supreme command, succeeded in ridding himselfof his rivals, and in the spring of 374 B. C. Was at length ready forthe advance. The expedition consisted of two hundred thousand Asiatictroops, and twenty thousand Greeks, three hundred triremes, two hundredgalleys of thirty oars, and numerous transports. Superiority of numberswas on the side of the Persians, and that just at the moment whenNectanebo lost his most experienced general. Artaxerxes had remonstratedwith the Athenians for permitting one of their generals to serve inEgypt, in spite of their professed friendship for himself, and, besidesinsisting on his recall, had requested for himself the services of thecelebrated Iphicrates. The Athenians complied with his demand, and whilesummoning Chabrias to return to Athens, despatched Iphicrates to Syria, where he was placed in command of the mercenary troops. Pharnabazusordered a general advance in May, 374 B. C. , * but when he arrived beforePelusium, he perceived that he was not in a position to take the townby storm; not only had the fortifications been doubled, but the banks ofthe canals had been cut and the approaches inundated. Iphicrates advisedhim not to persevere in attempting a regular siege: he contended that itwould be more profitable to detach an expeditionary force towards someless well-protected point on the coast, and there to make a breach inthe system of defence which protected the enemies' front. * As Kenrick justly observes, "the Persian and Athenian generals committed the same mistake which led to the defeat of Saint Louis and the capture of his army in 1249 A. D. , and which Bonaparte avoided in his campaign of 1798. " Anyhow, it seems that the fault must be laid on Pharnabazus alone, and that Iphicrates was entirely blameless. Three thousand men were despatched with all secrecy to the mouth of theMendesian branch of the Nile, and there disembarked unexpectedly beforethe forts which guarded the entrance. The garrison, having imprudentlymade a sortie in face of the enemy, was put to rout, and pursued sohotly that victors and vanquished entered pell-mell within the walls. [Illustration: 293. Jpg ARTAXERXES II. ] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a silver stater in the _Cabinet des Médailles_. After this success victory was certain, if the Persians pursued theiradvantage promptly and pushed forward straight into the heart of theDelta; the moment was the more propitious for such a movement, sinceNectanebo had drained Memphis of troops to protect his frontier. Iphicrates, having obtained this information from one of the prisoners, advised Pharnabazus to proceed up the Nile with the fleet, and takethe capital by storm before the enemy should have time to garrison itafresh; the Persian general, however, considered the plan too hazardous, and preferred to wait until the entire army should have joined him. Iphicrates offered to risk the adventure with his body of auxiliarytroops only, but was suspected of harbouring some ambitious design, andwas refused permission to advance. Meanwhile these delays had given theEgyptians time to recover from their first alarm; they boldly tookthe offensive, surrounded the position held by Pharnabazus, and werevictorious in several skirmishes. Summer advanced, the Nile rose morerapidly than usual, and soon the water encroached upon the land; theinvaders were obliged to beat a retreat before it, and fall back towardsSyria. Iphicrates, disgusted at the ineptitude and suspicion of hisAsiatic colleagues, returned secretly to Greece: the remains of thearmy were soon after disbanded, and Egypt once more breathed freely. The check received by the Persian arms, however, was not sufficientlynotorious to shake that species of supremacy which Artaxerxes hadexercised in Greece since the peace of 387. Sparta, Thebes, and Athensvied with each other in obtaining an alliance with him as keenly as ifhe had been successful before Pelusium. Antalcidas reappeared at Susa in372 B. C. To procure a fresh act of intervention; Pelopidas and Ismenias, in 367, begged for a rescript similar to that of Antalcidas; and finallyAthens sent a solemn embassy to entreat for a subsidy. It seemed as ifthe great king had become a kind of supreme arbiter for Greece, and thatall the states hitherto leagued against him now came in turn to submittheir mutual differences for his decision. But this arbiter who thusimposed his will on states beyond the borders of his empire was neverfully master within his own domains. Of gentle nature and pliantdisposition, inclined to clemency rather than to severity, and, moreover, so lacking in judgment as a general that he had almostsuccumbed to an attack by the Cadusians on the only occasion that hehad, in a whim of the moment, undertaken the command of an army inperson, Artaxerxes busied himself with greater zeal in religious reformsthan in military projects. He introduced the rites of Mithra and Anāhitainto the established religion of the state, but he had not the energynecessary to curb the ambitions of his provincial governors. Asia Minor, whose revolts followed closely on those of Egypt, rose in rebellionagainst him immediately after the campaign on the Nile, Ariobarzanesheading the rebellion in Phrygia, Datāmes and Aspis that in Cilicia andCappadocia, and both defying his power for several years. When at lengththey succumbed through treachery, the satraps of the Mediterraneandistrict, from the Hellespont to the isthmus of Suez, formed a coalitionand simultaneously took the field: the break-up of the empire would havebeen complete had not Persian darics been lavishly employed once more inthe affair. Meanwhile Nectanebo had died in 361, * and had been succeededby Tachōs. ** * The lists of Manetho assign ten or eighteen years to his reign. A sarcophagus in Vienna bears the date of his fifteenth year, and the great inscription of Edfu speaks of gifts he made to the temple in this town in the eighteenth year of his reign. The reading eighteen is therefore preferable to the reading ten in the lists of Manetho; if the very obscure text of the _Demotic Rhapsody_ really applies the number nine or ten to the length of the reign, this reckoning must be explained by some mystic calculations of the priests of the Ptolemaic epoch. ** The name of this king, written by the Greeks Teōs or Tachōs, in accordance with the pronunciation of different Egyptian dialects, has been discovered in hieroglyphic writing on the external wall of the temple of Khonsu at Karnak. The new Pharaoh deemed the occasion opportune to make a diversionagainst Persia and to further secure his own safety: he thereforeoffered his support to the satraps, who sent Eheomitres as a delegateto discuss the terms of an offensive and defensive alliance. Havinginherited from Nectanebo a large fleet and a full treasury, Tachōsentrusted to the ambassador 500 talents of silver, and gave him fiftyships, with which he cruised along the coast of Asia Minor towardsLeukź. His accomplices were awaiting him there, rejoicing at the successof his mission, but he himself had no confidence in the final issue ofthe struggle, and merely sought how he might enter once more into favourwith the Persian court; he therefore secured his safety by betraying hisassociates. He handed over the subsidies and the Egyptian squadron toOrontes, the satrap of Daskylium, and then seizing the insurgentchiefs sent them in chains to Susa. These acts of treachery changedthe complexion of affairs; the league suddenly dissolved after theimprisonment of its leaders, and Arta-xerxes re-established hisauthority over Asia Minor. [Illustration: 296. Jpg DATAMES III. ] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the _Cabinet des Médailles_. Egypt became once more the principal object of attack, and by theirony of fate Pharaoh had himself contributed to enrich the coffers andreinforce the fleet of his foes. In spite of this mischance, however, circumstances were so much in his favour that he ventured to considerwhether it would not be more advantageous to forestall the foe byattacking him, rather than passively to await an onslaught behind hisown lines. He had sought the friendship of Athens, * and, though it hadnot been granted in explicit terms, the republic had, nevertheless, permitted Ghabrias to resume his former post at his side. * The memory of this embassy has been preserved for us by a decree of the Athenian assembly, unfortunately much mutilated, which has been assigned to various dates between 362 and 358 B. C. M. Paul Foucart has shown that the date of the decree must be referred to one of three archon-ships-- the archonship of Callimedes, 360-59; that of Eucharistus, 359-8; or that of Cephisodotus, 358-7^ Without entering into a discussion of the other evidence on the subject, it seems to me probable that the embassy may be most conveniently assigned to the archonship of Callimedes, towards the end of 360 B. C. , at the moment when Chabrias had just arrived in Egypt, and was certain to endeavour to secure the help of Athens for the king he served. Chabrias exhorted him to execute his project, and as he had notsufficient money to defray the expenses of a long campaign outside hisown borders, the Athenian general instructed him how he might procurethe necessary funds. He suggested to him that, as the Egyptian priestswere wealthy, the sums of money annually assigned to them for thesacrifices and maintenance of the temples would be better employedin the service of the state, and counselled him to reduce or even tosuppress most of the sacerdotal colleges. The priests secured their ownsafety by abandoning their personal property, and the king graciouslydeigned to accept their gifts, and then declared to them that in future, as long as the struggle against Persia continued, he should exact fromthem nine-tenths of their sacred revenues. This tax would have sufficedfor all requirements if it had been possible to collect it in full, butthere is no doubt that very soon the priests must have discovered meansof avoiding part of the payment, for it was necessary to resort to otherexpedients. Chabrias advised that the poll and house taxes should beincreased; that one obol should be exacted for each "ardeb" of cornsold, and a tithe levied on the produce of all ship-building yards, manufactories, and manual industries. Money now poured into thetreasury, but a difficulty arose which demanded immediate solution. Egypt possessed very little specie, and the natives still employedbarter in the ordinary transactions of life, while the foreignmercenaries refused to accept payment in kind or uncoined metal; theydemanded good money as the price of their services. Orders were issuedto the natives to hand over to the royal exchequer all the gold andsilver in their possession, whether wrought or in ingots, the stateguaranteeing gradual repayment through the nomarchs from the futureproduct of the poll-tax, and the bullion so obtained was converted intospecie for the payment of the auxiliary troops. These measures, thoughwinning some unpopularity for Tachōs, enabled him to raise eightythousand native troops and ten thousand Greeks, to equip a fleet oftwo hundred vessels, and to engage the best generals of the period. Hiseagerness to secure the latter, however, was injurious to his cause. Having already engaged Chabrias and obtained the good will of Athens, hedesired also to gain the help of Agesilaus and the favourable opinionof the Lacedaemonians. Though now eighty years old, Agesilaus was stillunder the influence of cupidity and vanity; the promise of being placedin supreme command enticed him, and he set sail with one thousandhoplites. A disappointment awaited him at the moment of hisdisembarkation: Tachōs gave him command of the mercenary troops only, reserving for himself the general direction of operations, and placingthe whole fleet under the orders of Chabrias. The aged hero, havingvented his indignation by indulging a more than ordinary display ofSpartan rudeness, allowed himself to be appeased by abundant presents, and assumed the post assigned to him. But soon after a more serioussubject of disagreement arose between him and his ally; Agesilaus wasdisposed to think that Tachōs should remain quietly on the banks of theNile, and leave to his generals the task of conducting the campaign. The ease with which mercenary leaders passed from one camp to the other, according to the fancy of the moment, was not calculated to inspire theEgyptian Pharaoh with confidence: he refused to comply with the wishesof Agesilaus, and, entrusting the regency to one of his relatives, proceeded to invade Syria. He found the Persians unprepared: they shutthemselves up in their strongholds, and the Pharaoh confided to hiscousin Nectanebo, son of the regent, the task of dislodging them. Thewar dragged on for some time; discontent crept in among the nativelevies, and brought treachery in its train. The fiscal measures whichhad been adopted had exasperated the priests and the common people;complaints, at first only muttered in fear, found bold expression assoon as the expeditionary force had crossed the frontier. [Illustration: 299. Jpb NECTANEBO I] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius. The regent secretly encouraged the malcontents, and wrote to his sonwarning him of what was going on, and advised him to seize the crown. Nectanebo could easily have won over the Egyptian troops to his cause, but their support would have proved useless as long as the Greeks didnot pronounce in his favour, and Chabrias refused to break his oaths. Agesilaus, however, was not troubled by the same scruples. His vanityhad been sorely wounded by the Pharaoh: after being denied the positionwhich was, he fancied, his by right, his short stature, his ill-health, and native coarseness had exposed him to the unseemly mockery of thecourtiers. Tachōs, considering his ability had been over-estimated, applied to him, it is said, the fable of the mountain bringing forth amouse; to which he had replied, "When opportunity offers, I will proveto him that I am the lion. " When Tachōs requested him to bring therebels to order, he answered ironically that he was there to help theEgyptians, not to attack them; and before giving his support to eitherof the rival claimants, he should consult the Ephors. The Ephorsenjoined him to act in accordance with the welfare of his country, andhe thereupon took the side of Nectanebo, despite the remonstrances ofChabrias. Tachōs, deserted by his veterans, fled to Sidon, and thence toSusa, where Artaxerxes received him hospitably and without reproachinghim (359 B. C. ); but the news of his fall was not received on the banksof the Nile with as much rejoicing as he had anticipated. The people hadno faith in any revolution in which the Greeks whom they detested tookthe chief part, and the feudal lords refused to acknowledge a sovereignwhom they had not themselves chosen; they elected one of theirnumber--the prince of Mendes--to oppose Nectanebo. The latter wasobliged to abandon the possessions won by his predecessor, and returnwith his army to Egypt: he there encountered the forces of his enemy, which, though as yet undisciplined, were both numerous and courageous. Agesilaus counselled an immediate attack before these troops had time tobecome experienced in tactics, but he no longer stood well at court;the prince of Mendes had endeavoured to corrupt him, and, though he hadshown unexpected loyalty, many, nevertheless, suspected his goodfaith. Nectanebo set up his headquarters at Tanis, where he was shortlyblockaded by his adversary. It is well known how skilfully the Egyptianshandled the pick-axe, and how rapidly they could construct walls ofgreat strength; the circle of entrenchments was already near completion, and provisions were beginning to fail, when Agesilaus receivedpermission to attempt a sortie. He broke through the besieging linesunder cover of the night, and some days later won a decisive victory(359 B. C. ). Nectanebo would now have gladly kept the Spartan general athis side, for he was expecting a Persian attack; but Agesilaus, who hadhad enough of Egypt and its intrigues, deserted his cause, and shortlyafterwards died of exhaustion on the coast near Cyrene. The anticipatedPersian invasion followed shortly after, but it was conducted withoutenergy or decision. Artaxerxes had entrusted the conduct of theexpedition to Tachōs, doubtless promising to reinstate him in his formerpower as satrap or vassal king of Egypt, but Tachōs died before he couldeven assume his post, * and the discords which rent the family of thePersian king prevented the generals who replaced him from taking anyeffective action. * Ęlian narrates, probably following Dinon, that Tachōs died of dysentery due to over-indulgence at dinner. The aged Artaxerxes had had, it was reported, one hundred and fifteensons by the different women in his harem, but only three of those by hisqueen Statira were now living--Darius, Ariaspes, and Ochus. Darius, the eldest of the three, had been formally recognised asheir-apparent--perhaps at the time of the disastrous war against theCadusians* --but the younger brother, Ochus, who secretly aspired tothe throne, had managed to inspire him with anxiety with regard tothe succession, and incited him to put the aged king out of the way. Contemporary historians, ill informed as to the intrigues in thepalace, whose effects they noted without any attempt to explore theirintricacies, invented several stories to account for the conduct of theyoung prince. Some assigned as the reason of his conspiracy a romanticlove-affair. They said that Cyrus the Younger had had an Ionian mistressnamed Aspasia, who, after the fatal battle of Cunaxa, had been takeninto the harem of the conqueror, and had captivated him by her beauty. Darius conceived a violent passion for this damsel, and his father wasat first inclined to give her up to him, but afterwards, repenting ofhis complaisance, consecrated her to the service of Mithra, a cult whichimposed on her the obligation of perpetual chastity. Darius, exasperatedby this treatment, began to contemplate measures of vengeance, but, being betrayed by his brother Ochus, was put to death with his wholefamily. ** * Pompeius Trogus asserts that such co-regencies were contrary to Persian law; we have seen above that, on the contrary, they were obligatory when the sovereign was setting out on a campaign. ** This is the version of the story given by Dinon and accepted by Pompoius Trogus. A chronological calculation easily demonstrates its unlikelihood. It follows from the evidence given by Justin himself that Artaxerxes died of grief soon after the execution of his son; but, on the other hand, that the battle of Cunaxa took place in 400 B. C. : Aspasia must then have been fifty or sixty years old when Darius fell in love with her. By the removal of this first obstacle the crafty prince found himselfonly one step nearer success, for his brother Ariaspes was acknowledgedas heir-apparent: Ochus therefore persuaded him that their father, convinced of the complicity of Ariaspes in the plot imputed to Darius, intended to put him to an ignominious death, and so worked upon him thathe committed suicide to escape the executioner. A bastard named Arsames, who might possibly have aspired to the crown, was assassinated by Ochus. This last blow was too much for Artaxerxes, and he died of grief after areign of forty-six years (358 B. C. ). * Ochus, who immediately assumed thename of Artaxerxes, began his reign by the customary massacre: he put todeath all the princes of the royal family, ** and having thus ridhimself of all the rival claimants to the supreme power, he hastened onpreparations for the war with Egypt which had been interrupted by hisfather's death and his own accession. * This is the length attributed by Plutarch to this reign, and which is generally accepted. It was narrated in after- days that the king kept the fact of his father's death hidden for ten months, but it is impossible to tell how much truth there is in this statement, which was accepted by Dinon. ** According to the author followed by Pompeius Trogus, the princesses themselves were involved in this massacre. This is certainly an exaggeration, for we shall shortly see that Darius III. , the last king of Persia, was accounted to be the grandson of Darius II. ; the massacre can only have involved the direct heirs of Artaxerxes. The necessity for restoring Persian dominion on the banks of the Nilewas then more urgent than at any previous time. During the half-centurywhich had elapsed since the recovery of her independence, Egypt hadbeen a perpetual source of serious embarrassment to the great king. Thecontemporaries of Amyrtseus, whether Greeks or barbarians, had at firstthought that his revolt was nothing more than a local rising, like manya previous one which had lasted but a short time and had been promptlysuppressed. But when it was perceived that the native dynasties hadtaken a hold upon the country, and had carried on a successful contestwith Persia, in spite of the immense disproportion in their respectiveresources; when not only the bravest soldiers of Asia, but the bestgenerals of Greece, had miserably failed in their attacks on thefrontier of the Delta, Phoenicia and Syria began to think whether whatwas possible in Africa might not also be possible in Asia. From thattime forward, whenever a satrap or vassal prince meditated revolt, itwas to Egypt that he turned as a natural ally, and from Egypt he soughtthe means to carry out his project; however needy the Pharaoh of thatday might be, he was always able to procure for such a suitor sufficientmoney, munitions of war, ships, and men to enable him to make waragainst the empire. The attempt made by Ochus failed, as all previousattempts had done: the two adventurers who commanded the forces ofNectanebo, the Athenian Diophantes and Lamius of Sparta, inflicted adisastrous defeat on the imperial troops, and forced them to beat ahasty retreat. This defeat was all the more serious in its consequencesbecause of the magnitude of the efforts which had been made: the kinghimself was in command of the troops, and had been obliged to turn hisback precipitately on the foe. The Syrian provinces, which had been inan unsettled condition ever since the invasion under Tachōs, flew toarms; nine petty kings of Cyprus, including Evagoras II. , nephew of thefamous prince of that name, refused to pay tribute, and Artabazusroused Asia Minor to rebellion. The Phoenicians still hesitated; butthe insolence of their satrap, the rapacity of the generals who hadbeen repulsed from Egypt, and the lack of discipline in the Persianarmy forced them to a decision. In a convention summoned at Tripoli, therepresentatives of the Phoenician cities conferred on Tennes, Kingof Sidon, the perilous honour of conducting the operations of theconfederate army, and his first act was to destroy the royal villain the Lebanon, and his next to burn the provisions which had beenaccumulated in various ports in view of the Egyptian war (351-350 B. C. ). [Illustration: 305. Jpg evagoras ii. Of salamis] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the _Cabinet des Médailles_. Ochus imagined at the outset that his generals would soon suppress theserebellions, and, in fact, Idrieus, tyrant of Caria, supported by eightthousand mercenaries under the Athenian Phocion, overcame the pettytyrants of Cyprus without much difficulty; but in Asia Minor, Artabazus, supported by Athens and Thebes, held at bay the generals sent to opposehim, and Tennes won a signal victory in Syria. He turned for supportto Egypt, and Nectanebo, as might be expected, put Greek troops at hisdisposal to the number of four thousand, commanded by one of his bestgenerals, Mentor of Ehodes: Belesys, the satrap of Syria, and Mazseus, satrap of Cilicia, suffered a total defeat. Ochus, exasperated at theirwant of success, called out every available soldier, three hundredthousand Asiatics and ten thousand Greeks; the Sidonians, on their side, dug a triple trench round their city, raised their ramparts, and setfire to their ships, to demonstrate their intention of holding outto the end. Unfortunately, their king, Tennes, was not a man of firmresolution. Hitherto he had lived a life of self-indulgence, surroundedby the women of his harem, whom he had purchased at great cost in Ioniaand Greece, and had made it the chief object of his ambition to surpassin magnificence the most ostentatious princes of Cyprus, especiallyNicocles of Salamis, son of Evagoras. The approach of Ochus confusedhis scanty wits; he endeavoured to wipe out his treachery towards hissuzerain by the betrayal of his own subjects. He secretly despatchedhis confidential minister, a certain Thessalion, to the Persian camp, promising to betray Sidon to the Persian king, and to act as his guideinto Egypt on condition of having his life preserved and his royal rankguaranteed to him. Ochus had already agreed to these conditions, whenan impulse of vanity on his part nearly ruined the whole arrangement. Thessalion, not unreasonably doubting the king's good faith, haddemanded that he should swear by his right hand to fulfil to the letterall the clauses of the treaty; whereupon Ochus, whose dignity wasoffended by this insistence, gave orders for the execution of theambassador. But as the latter was being dragged away, he cried out thatthe king could do as he liked, but that if he disdained the help ofTennes, he would fail in his attacks both upon Phonicia and Egypt. Thesewords produced a sudden reaction, and Thessalion obtained all that hedemanded. When the Persians had arrived within a few days' march ofSidon, Tennes proclaimed that a general assembly of the Phoeniciandeputies was to be held, and under pretext of escorting the hundredleading men of his city to the appointed place of meeting, led them intothe enemy's camp, where they were promptly despatched by the javelins ofthe soldiery. The Sidonians, deserted by their king, were determinedto carry on the struggle, in the expectation of receiving succour fromEgypt; but the Persian darics had already found their way into the handsof the mercenary troops, and the general whom Nectanebo had lent them, declared that his men considered the position desperate, and that heshould surrender the city at the first summons. The Sidonians thereuponfound themselves reduced to the necessity of imploring the mercy of theconqueror, and five hundred of them set out to meet him as suppliants, carrying olive branches in their hands. Bub Ochus was the most cruelmonarch who had ever reigned in Persia--the only one, perhaps, who wasreally bloodthirsty by nature; he refused to listen to the entreaties ofthe suppliants, and, like the preceding hundred delegates, they were allslain. The remaining citizens, perceiving that they could not hope forpardon, barricaded themselves in their houses, to which they set firewith their own hands; forty thousand persons perished in the flames, andso great was the luxury in the appointments of the private houses, that large sums were paid for the right to dig for the gold and silverornaments buried in the ruins. The destruction of the city was almost ascomplete as in the days of Esarhaddon. When Sidon had thus met her fate, the Persians had no further reason for sparing its king, Tennes, and hewas delivered to the executioner; whereupon the other Phoenician kings, terrified by his fate, opened their gates without a struggle. Once more the treachery of a few traitors had disconcerted the plans ofthe Pharaoh, and delivered the outposts of Egypt into the hands of theenemy: but Ochus renewed his preparations with marvellous tenacity, andresolved to neglect nothing which might contribute to his final success. His victories had confirmed the cities of the empire in their loyalty, and they vied with one another in endeavouring to win oblivion for theirformer hesitation by their present zeal: "What city, or what nation ofAsia did not send embassies to the sovereign? what wealth did they notlavish on him, whether the natural products of the soil, or the rare andprecious productions of art? Did he not receive a quantity of tapestryand woven hangings, some of purple, some of diverse colours, others ofpure white? many gilded pavilions, completely furnished, and containingan abundant supply of linen and sumptuous beds? chased silver, wroughtgold, cups and bowls, enriched with precious stones, or valuable for theperfection and richness of their work? He also received untold suppliesof barbarian and Grecian weapons, and still larger numbers of draughtcattle and of sacrificial victims, bushels of preserved fruits, balesand sacks full of parchments or books, and all kinds of useful articles?So great was the quantity of salted meats which poured in from allsides, that from a distance the piles might readily be mistaken forrows of hillocks or high mounds. " The land-force was divided into threecorps, each under a barbarian and a Greek general. It advanced alongthe sea coast, following the ancient route pursued by the armies of thePharaohs, and as it skirted the marshes of Sirbonis, some detachments, having imprudently ventured over the treacherous soil, perished to aman. When the main force arrived in safety before Pelusium, it foundNectanebo awaiting it behind his ramparts and marshes. He had fewer menthan his adversary, his force numbering only six thousand Egyptians, twenty thousand Libyans, and the same number of Greeks; but theremembrance of the successes won by himself and his predecessors withinferior numbers inspired him with confidence in the issue of thestruggle. His fleet could not have ventured to meet in battle thecombined squadrons of Cyprus and Phoenicia, but, on the other hand, hehad a sufficient number of flat-bottomed boats to prevent any adversaryfrom entering the mouths of the Nile. The weak points along hisMediterranean seaboard and eastern frontier were covered by strongholds, fortifications, and entrenched camps: in short, his plans weresufficiently well laid to ensure success in a defensive war, if therash ardour of his Greek mercenaries had not defeated his plans. Fivethousand of these troops were in occupation of Pelusium, under commandof Philophrōn. Some companies of Thebans, who were serving underLacrates in the Persian army, crossed a deep canal which separated themfrom the city, and provoked the garrison to risk an encounter inthe open field. Philophrōn, instead of treating their challenge withindifference, accepted it, and engaged in a combat which lasted tillnightfall. On the following day, Lacrates, having drawn off the watersof the canal and thrown a dyke across it, led his entire force up to theglacis of the fortifications, dug some trenches, and brought up aline of battering-rams. He would soon have effected a breach, but theEgyptians understood how to use the spade as well as the lance, andwhile the outer wall was crumbling, they improvised behind it a secondwall, crowned with wooden turrets. Nectanebo, who had come up withthirty thousand native, five thousand Greek troops, and half theLibyan contingent, observed the vicissitudes of the siege from a shortdistance, and by his presence alone opposed the advance of the bulkof the Persian army. Weeks passed by, the time of the inundation wasapproaching, and it seemed as if this policy of delay would have itsaccustomed success, when an unforeseen incident decided in a moment thefate of Egypt. Among the officers of Ochus was a certain Nicostratus ofArgos, who on account of his prodigious strength was often compared toHeracles, and who out of vanity dressed himself up in the traditionalcostume of that hero, the lion's skin and the club. Having imbibed, doubtless, the ideas formerly propounded by Iphicrates, Nicostratusforced some peasants, whose wives and children he had seized ashostages, to act as his guides, and made his way up one of the canalswhich traverse the marshes of Menzaleh: there he disembarked his men inthe rear of Nectanebo, and took up a very strong position on theborder of the cultivated land. This enterprise, undertaken with a veryinsufficient force, was an extremely rash one; if the Egyptian generalshad contented themselves with harassing Nicostratus without venturing onengaging him in a pitched battle, they would speedily have forced him tore-embark or to lay down his arms. Unfortunately, however, five thousandmercenaries, who formed the garrison of one of the neighbouring towns, hastened to attack him under the command of Clinias of Cos, and suffereda severe defeat. As a result, the gates of the town were thrown opento the enemy, and if the Persians, encouraged by the success of thisforlorn hope, had followed it up boldly, Nectanebo would have run therisk of being cut off from his troops which were around Pelusium, and ofbeing subsequently crushed. He thought it wiser to retreat towards theapex of the Delta, but this very act of prudence exposed him to one ofthose accidental misfortunes which are wont to occur in armies formedof very diverse elements. While he was concentrating his reserves atMemphis, the troops of the first line thought that, by leavingthem exposed to the assaults of the great king, he was deliberatelysacrificing them. Pelusium capitulated to Lacrates; Mentor of Ehodespushed forward and seized Bubastis, and the other cities in the easternportion of the Delta, fearing to bring upon themselves the fateof Sidon, opened their gates to the Persians after a mere show ofresistance. The forces which had collected at Memphis thereupondisbanded, and Nectanebo, ruined by these successive disasters, collected his treasures and fled to Ethiopia. The successful issue ofthe rash enterprise of Nicostratus had overthrown the empire of thePharaohs, and re-established the Persian empire in its integrity (342B. C. ). * * The complete history of this war is related by Diodorus Siculus, who generally follows the narrative of Theopompus. The chronology is still sufficiently uncertain to leave some doubt as to the exact date of each event; I have followed that arrangement which seems to accord best with the general history of the period. The following table may be drawn up of the last Egyptian dynasties as far as they can be restored at present:-- [Illustration: 312. Jpg TABLE OF THE LAST EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES] Egypt had prospered under the strong rule of its last native Pharaohs. Every one of them, from Amyrtous down to Nectanebo, had done his bestto efface all traces of the Persian invasions and restore to the countrythe appearance which it had presented before the days of its servitude;even kings like Psamutis and Tachōs, whose reign had been of thebriefest, had, like those who ruled for longer periods, constructed orbeautified the monuments of the country. The Thebaid was in this respecta special field of their labours. The island of Philę, exposed to theceaseless attacks of the Ethiopians, had been reduced to little morethan a pile of ruins. [Illustration: 313. Jpg SMALL TEMPLE OF NECTANEBO, AT THE SOUTHERNEXTREMITY OF PHILAE] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato. Nectanebo II. Erected a magnificent gate there, afterwards incorporatedinto the first pylon of the temple built by the Ptolemies, and oneat least of the buildings that still remain, the charming rectangularkiosk, the pillars of which, with their Hathor capitals, rise abovethe southern extremity of the island and mark the spot at which theEthiopian pilgrims first set foot on the sacred territory of thebountiful Isis. Nectanebo I. Restored the sanctuaries of Nekhabīt atEl-Kab, and of Horus at Edfu, in which latter place he has left anadmirable naos which delights the modern traveller by its severeproportions and simplicity of ornament, while Nectanebo II. Repaired theancient temple of Mīnu at Coptos; in short, without giving a detailedlist of what was accomplished by each of these later Pharaohs, it may besaid that there are few important sites in the valley of the Nile wheresome striking evidence of their activity may not still be discoveredeven after the lapse of so many centuries. [Illustration: 314. Jpg NAOS OF NECTANEBO IN THE TEMPLE AT EDFU] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato. It will be sufficient to mention Thebes, Memphis, Sebennytos, Bubastis, Pahabīt, Patumu, and Tanis. Nor did the Theban oases, including that ofAmon himself, escape their zeal, for the few Europeans who have visitedthem in modern times have observed their cartouches there. [Illustration: 315. Jpg GREAT GATE OF NECTANEBO AT KARNAK] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato. Moreover, in spite of the brief space of time within which they werecarried out, the majority of these works betray no signs of hasteor slipshod execution; the craftsmen employed on them seem to havepreserved in their full integrity all the artistic traditions of earliertimes, and were capable of producing masterpieces which will bearcomparison with those of the golden age. The Eastern gate, erected atKarnak in the time of Nectanebo II. , is in no way inferior either inpurity of proportion or in the beauty of its carvings to what remains ofthe gates of Amenōthes III. [Illustration: 316. Jpg fragment of a Naos of THE time of nectanebo II. In the Bologna Museum] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Flinders Pétrie. The sarcophagus of Nectanebo I. Is carved and decorated with aperfection of skill which had never been surpassed in any age, andelsewhere, on all the monuments which bear the name of this monarch thehieroglyphics have been designed and carved with as much care as thougheach one of them had been a precious cameo. * * The sarcophagus was for a long time preserved near the mosque of Ibn-Tulun, and was credited with peculiar virtues by the superstitious inhabitants of Cairo. The basalt torso of Nectanebo II. , which attracts so much admirationin the Bibliothčque Nationale in Paris for accuracy of proportion anddelicacy of modelling, deserves to rank with the finest statues of theancient empire. The men's heads are veritable portraits, in which suchdetails as a peculiar conformation of the skull, prominent cheekbones, deep-set eyes, sunken cheeks, or the modelling of the chin, have allbeen observed and reproduced with a fidelity and keenness of observationwhich we fail to find in such works of the earlier artists as have comedown to us. These later sculptors display the same regard for truth intheir treatment of animals, and their dog-headed divinities; their dogs, lions, and sphinxes will safely bear comparison with the most lifelikepresentments of these creatures to be found among the remains of theMemphite or Theban eras. Egypt was thus in the full tide of materialprosperity when it again fell under the Persian yoke, and might havebecome a source of inexhaustible wealth to Ochus had he known how tosecure acceptance of his rule, as Darius, son of Hystaspes, had done inthe days of Amasis. [Illustration: 317. Jpg ONE OF THE LIONS IN THE VATICAN] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Flinders Pétrie. The violence of his temperament, however, impelled him to a course ofpitiless oppression, and his favourite minister, the eunuch Bagoas, seems to have done his best to stimulate his master's natural cruelty. In the days when they felt themselves securely protected from his angerby their Libyan and Greek troops, the fellahīn had freely indulged inlampoons at the expense of their Persian suzerain; they had compared himto Typhon on account of his barbarity, and had nicknamed him "the Ass, "this animal being in their eyes a type of everything that is vile. On his arrival at Memphis, Ochus gave orders that an ass should beinstalled in the temple of Phtah, and have divine honours paid to it; henext had the bull Apis slaughtered and served up at a set banquet whichhe gave to his friends on taking possession of the White Wall. Thesacred goat of Mendes suffered the same fate as the Apis, and doubtlessnone of the other sacred animals were spared. Bagoas looted the templesin the most systematic way, despatched the sacred books to Persia, razedthe walls of the cities to the ground, and put every avowed partisan ofthe native dynasty to the sword. After these punitive measures had beencarried out, Ochus disbanded his mercenaries and returned to Babylon, leaving Pherendates in charge of the reconquered province. * * It seems that a part of the atrocities committed by Ochus and Bagoas soon came to be referred to the time of the "Impure" and to that of Cambyses. The downfall of Egypt struck terror into the rebellious satraps who werein arms elsewhere. Artabazus, who had kept Asia Minor in a ferment eversince the time of Artaxerxes II. , gave up the struggle of his own accordand took refuge in Macedonia. The petty kings of the cities on theshores of the Hellespont and the Ęgean submitted themselves in order toregain favour, or if, like Hermias of Atarnasa, the friend of Aristotle, they still resisted, they were taken prisoners and condemned to death. The success of Ochus was a reality, but there was still much to be donebefore things were restored to the footing they had occupied before thecrisis. We know enough of the course of events in the western provincesto realise the pitch of weakness to which the imbecility of Darius II. And his son Artaxerxes II. Had reduced the empire of Darius andXerxes, but it is quite certain that the disastrous effects of theirmisgovernment were not confined to the shores of the Mediterranean, but were felt no less acutely in the eastern and central regions of theempire. There, as on the Greek frontiers, the system built up at thecost of so much ingenuity by Darius was gradually being broken down witheach year that passed, and the central government could no longermake its power felt at the extremities of the empire save at irregularintervals, when its mandates were not intercepted or nullified intransmission. The functions of the "Eyes" and "Ears" of the king haddegenerated into a mere meaningless formality, and were, more oftenthan not, dispensed with altogether. The line of demarcation betweenthe military and civil power had been obliterated: not only had theoriginally independent offices of satrap, general, and secretary ceasedto exist in each separate province, but, in many instances, the satrap, after usurping the functions of his two colleagues, contrived to extendhis jurisdiction till it included several provinces, thus establishinghimself as a kind of viceroy. Absorbed in disputes among themselves, orin conspiracies against the Achsemenian dynasty, these officials had notime to look after the well-being of the districts under their control, and the various tribes and cities took advantage of this to break theties of vassalage. To take Asia Minor alone, some of the petty kingsof Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and certain districts of Cappadocia or themountainous parts of Phrygia still paid their tribute intermittently, and only when compelled to do so; others, however, such as thePisidians, Lycaonians, a part of the Lycians, and some races of MountTaurus, no longer dreamed of doing so. The three satrapies on the shoresof the Caspian, which a hundred years before had wedged themselves inbetween that sea and the Euxine, were now dissolved, all trace of thembeing lost in a confused medley of kingdoms and small states, some ofwhich were ready enough to acknowledge the supremacy of Persia, whileothers, such as the Gordiseans, Taochi, Chalybes, Colchi, Mosynoki, andTibarenians, obeyed no rule but their own. [Illustration: 321. Jpg MAP OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE] All along the Caspian, the Cadusians and Amardians, on either side ofthe chain of mountains bordering the Iranian plateau, defied all theefforts made to subdue them. * India and the Sakse had developed fromthe condition of subjects into that of friendly allies, and thesavage hordes of Gedrosia and the Paropamisus refused to recognise anyauthority at all. ** * They appear in the history of every epoch as the irreconcilable foes of the great king, enemies against whom even the most peacefully disposed sovereigns were compelled to take the field in person. ** The Sakę fought at Arbela, but only as allies of the Persians. The Indians who are mentioned with them came from the neighbourhood of Cabul; most of the races who had formerly figured in Darius' satrapy of India had become independent by the time Alexander penetrated into the basin of the Indus. The whole empire needed to be reconquered and reorganised bit by bit ifit was to exercise that influence in the world to which its immense sizeentitled it, and the question arose whether the elements of which itconsisted would lend themselves to any permanent reorganisation orreadjustment. The races of the ancient Eastern world, or, at any rate, that portion ofthem which helped to make its history, either existed no longer or hadsunk into their dotage. They had worn each other out in the centuriesof their prime, Chaldęans and Assyrians fighting against Cossęans orElamites, Egyptians against Ethiopians and against Hittites, Urartians, Armęans, the peoples of Lebanon and of Damascus, the Phoenicians, Canaanites and Jews, until at last, with impoverished blood and flaggingenergies, they were thrown into conflict with younger and more vigorousnations. The Medes had swept away all that still remained of Assyriaand Urartu; the Persians had overthrown the Medes, the Lydians, and theChaldęans, till Egypt alone remained and was struck down by them in herturn. What had become of these conquered nations during the periodof nearly two hundred years that the Achęmenians had ruled over them?First, as regards Elam, one of the oldest and formerly the most powerfulof them all. She had been rent into two halves, each of them destinedto have a different fate. In the mountains, the Uxians, Mardians, Elymasans, and Cossęans--tribes who had formerly been the backbone ofthe nation--had relapsed into a semi-barbarous condition, or rather, while the rest of the world had progressed in civilization andrefinement, they had remained in a state of stagnation, adheringobstinately to the customs of their palmy days: just as they had harriedthe Chaldęans or Assyrians in the olden times, so now they harried thePersians; then, taking refuge in their rocky fastnesses, they lived onthe proceeds of their forays, successfully resisting all attempts madeto dislodge them. The people of the plains, on the other hand, kept incheck from the outset by the presence of the court at Susa, not onlypromptly resigned themselves to their fate, but even took pleasure init, and came to look upon themselves as in some sort the masters ofAsia. Was it not to their country, to the very spot occupied by thepalace of their king, that, for nearly two hundred years, satraps, vassal kings, the legates of foreign races, ambassadors of Greekrepublics--in a word, all the great ones of this world--came every yearto render homage, and had not the treasures which these visitors broughtwith them been expended, in part at any rate, on their country? Thememory of their former prosperity paled before the splendours of theirnew destiny, and the glory of their ancestors suffered eclipse. Thenames of the national kings, the story of their Chaldęan and Syrianconquests, the trophies of their victories over the great generalsof Nineveh, the horrors of their latest discords and of the finalcatastrophe were all forgotten; even the documents which might havehelped to recall them lay buried in the heart of the mound which servedas a foundation for the palace of the Achgernenides. Beyond the vagueconsciousness of a splendid past, the memory of the common people wasa blank, and when questioned by strangers they could tell them nothingsave legends of the gods or the exploits of mythical heroes; and fromthem the Greeks borrowed their Memnon, that son of Tithonus and Eōswho rushed to the aid of Priam with his band of Ethiopians, and whoseprowess had failed to retard by a single day the downfall of Troy. Further northwards, the Urartians and peoples of ancient Naīri, lessfavoured by fortune, lost ground with each successive generation, yielding to the steady pressure of the Armenians. In the time ofHerodotus they were still in possession of the upper basins of theEuphrates and Araxus, and, in conjunction with the Matieni and Saspires, formed a satrapy--the eighteenth--the boundaries of which coincidedpretty closely with those of the kingdom ruled over by the last kingsof Van in the days of Assur-bani-pal; the Armenians, on their side, constituted the thirteenth satrapy, between Mount Taurus and the LowerArsanias. [Illustration: 325. Jpg COINS OF THE SATRAPS WITH ARAMAEAN INSCRIPTIONS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from coins in the _Cabinet des Médailles_ The whole face of their country had undergone a profound change sincethat time: the Urartians, driven northwards, became intermingled withthe tribes on the slopes of the Caucasus, while the Armenians, carriedalong towards the east, as though by some resistless current, werenow scaling the mountainous bulwark of Ararat, and slowly but surelyencroaching on the lower plains of the Araxes. These politicalchanges had been almost completed by the time of Ochus, and Urartu haddisappeared from the scene, but an Armenia now flourished in the veryregion where Urartu had once ruled, and its princes, who were relatedto the family of the Achęmenides, wielded an authority little short ofregal under the modest name of satraps. Thanks to their influence, thereligions and customs of Iran were introduced into the eastern bordersof Asia Minor. They made their way into the valleys of the Iris and theHalys, into Cappadocia and the country round Mount Taurus, and thitherthey brought with them the official script of the empire, the Persianand Aramaean cuneiform which was employed in public documents, ininscriptions, and on coins. The centre of the peninsula remained verymuch the same as it had been in the period of the Phrygian supremacy, but further westward Hellenic influences gradually made themselves felt. [Illustration: 326. Jpg A LYCIAN TOMB] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a woodcut in Bonndorff. The arts of Greece, its manners, religious ideals, and modes of thought, were slowly displacing civilisations of the Asianic type, and even inplaces like Lycia, where the language successfully withstood the Greekinvasion, the life of the nations, and especially of their rulers, became so deeply impregnated with Hellenism as to differ but little fromthat in the cities on the Ionic, Ęolian, or Doric seaboard. The Lyciansstill adhered to the ancient forms which characterised their funeraryarchitecture, but it was to Greek sculptors, or pupils from the Grecianschools, that they entrusted the decoration of the sides of theirsarcophagi and of their tombs. [Illustration: 327b. Jpg STATUE OF MAUSOLUS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph of the original in the British Museum. [Illustration: 327a. Jpg COIN OF A LYCIAN KING] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a silver stater in the _Cabinet des Médailles. _ The king in question was named Deneveles, and is only known by the coins bearing his superscription. He flourished about 395 B. C. Their kings minted coins many of which are reckoned among themasterpieces of antique engraving; and if we pass from Lycia to thepetty states of Caria, we come upon one of the greatest triumphs ofGreek art--that huge mausoleum in which the inconsolable Artemisiaenclosed the ashes and erected the statue of her husband. The Asia Minorof Egyptian times, with its old-world dynasties, its old-world names, and old-world races, had come to be nothing more than an historicmemory; even that martial world, in which the Assyrian conquerors foughtso many battles from the Euphrates to the Black Sea, was now no more, and its neighbours and enemies of former days had, for the most part, disappeared from the land of the living. [Illustration: 328. Jpg LYCIAN SARCOPHAGUS DECORATED WITH GREEK CARVINGS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photogravure published by Hamdy-Beg and Th. Reinach. The Lotanu were gone, the Khāti were gone, and gone, too, wereCarchemish, Arpad, and Qodshu, much of th§ir domain having beenswallowed up again by the desert for want of hands to water and till it;even Assyria itself seemed but a shadow half shrouded in the mists ofoblivion. Sangara, Nisibis, Resaina, and Edessa still showed some signsof vigour, but on quitting the slopes of the Masios and proceedingsouthwards, piles of ruins alone marked the sites of those wealthycities through which the Ninevite monarchs had passed in theirjourneyings towards Syria. Here wide tracts of arid and treelesscountry were now to be seen covered with aromatic herbage, where theScenite Arabs were wont to pursue the lion, wild ass, ostrich, bustard, antelope, and gazelle; a few abandoned forts, such as Korsortź, Anatho, and Is (Hit) marked the halting-places of armies on the banks of theEuphrates. In the region of the Tigris, the descendants of Assyriancaptives who, like the Jews, had been set free by Cyrus, had rebuiltAssur, and had there grown wealthy by husbandry and commerce, * but inthe district of the Zab solitude reigned supreme. ** Calah and Ninevehwere alike deserted, and though their ruins still littered the siteswhere they had stood, their names were unknown in the neighbouringvillages. Xenophon, relying on his guides, calls the former placeLarissa, the second Mespila. *** * This seems to be indicated by a mutilated passage in the _Cylinder of Gyrus_, where Assur is mentioned in the list of towns and countries whose inhabitants were sent back to their homes by Cyrus after the capture of Babylon. Xenophon calls it Esense, this being, possibly, a translation of the name given to it by its inhabitants. Nothing could be more natural than for exiles to call the villages founded by them on their return "new. " The town seems to have been a large and wealthy one. ** Xenophon calls this country Media, a desert region which the Ten Thousand took six days to cross. *** The name Larissa is, possibly, a corruption of some name similar to that of the city of Larsam in Chaldęa; Mespila may be a generic term. [Mespila is Muspula, "the low ground" at the foot of Kouyunjik; Larissa probably Al Resen or Res-eni, between Kouyunjik and Nebi Yunus. --Ed. ] Already there were historians who took the ziggurāt at Nineveh to bethe burial-place of Sardanapalus. They declared that Cyrus had pulled itdown in order to strengthen his camp during the siege of the town, andthat formerly it had borne an epitaph afterwards put into verse by thepoet Choerilus of Iassus: "I reigned, and so long as I beheld the lightof the sun, I ate, I drank, I loved, well knowing how brief is thelife of man, and to how many vicissitudes it is liable. " Many writers, remembering the Assyrian monument at Anchialź in Cilicia, were inclinedto place the king's tomb there. It was surmounted by the statue of aman--according to one account, with his hands crossed upon his breast, according to another, in the act of snapping his fingers--and bore thefollowing inscription in Chaldaic letters: "I, Sardanapalus, son ofAnakyndaraxes, founded Anchialź and Tarsus in one day, but now am dead. "Thus ten centuries of conquests and massacre had passed away like avapour, leaving nothing but a meagre residue of old men's tales andmoral axioms. In one respect only does the civilisation of the Euphrates seem to havefairly held its own. Cossęa, though it had lost its independence, hadlost but little of its wealth; its former rebellions had done it nogreat injury, and its ancient cities were still left standing, thoughshorn of their early splendour. Uru, it is true, numbered but fewcitizens round its tottering sanctuaries, but Uruk maintained a schoolof theologians and astronomers no less famous throughout the East thanthose of Borsippa. The swamps, however, which surrounded it possessedfew attractions, and Greek travellers rarely ventured thither. Theygenerally stopped at Babylon, or if they ventured off the beaten track, it was only to visit the monuments of Nebuchadrezzar, or the tombs ofthe early kings in its immediate neighbourhood. Babylon was, indeed, oneof the capitals of the empire--nay, for more than half a century, duringthe closing years of Artaxerxes I. , in the reign of Darius II. , andin the early days of Artaxerxes IL, it had been the real capital; evenunder Ochus, the court spent the winter months there, and resortedthither in quest of those resources of industry and commerce which Susalacked. The material benefits due to the presence of the sovereign seemto have reconciled the city to its subject condition; there had been noseditious movement there since the ill-starred rising of Shamasherīb, which Xerxes had quelled with ruthless severity. The Greek mercenariesor traders who visited it, though prepared for its huge size by generalreport, could not repress a feeling of astonishment as they approachedit. First of all there was the triple wall of Nebuchadrezzar, with itsmoats, its rows of towers, and its colossal gateways. Unlike the Greekcities, it had been laid out according to a regular plan, and formed aperfect square, inside which the streets crossed one another at rightangles, some parallel to the Euphrates, others at right angles to it;every one of the latter terminated in a brazen gate opening through themasonry of the quay, and giving access to the river. The passengers whocrowded the streets included representatives of all the Asiatic races, the native Babylonians being recognisable by their graceful dress, consisting of a linen tunic falling to the feet, a fringed shawl, roundcap, and heavy staff terminating in a knob. From this ever-changingbackground stood out many novel features calculated to stimulate Greekcuriosity, such as the sick persons exposed at street-corners inorder that they might beg the passers-by to prescribe for them, theprostitution of her votaries within the courts of the goddess Mylitta, and the disposal of marriageable girls by auction: Herodotus, however, regretted that this latter custom had fallen into abeyance. And yet tothe attentive eye of a close observer even Babylon must have furnishedmany unmistakable symptoms of decay. The huge boundary wall enclosedtoo large an area for the population sheltered behind it; whole quarterswere crumbling into heaps of ruins, and the flower and vegetable gardenswere steadily encroaching on spaces formerly covered with houses. Publicbuildings had suffered quite as much as private dwellings from thePersian wars. Xerxes had despoiled the temples, and no restorationhad been attempted since his time. The ziggurāt of Bel lay half buriedalready beneath piles of rubbish; the golden statues which had oncestood within its chambers had disappeared, and the priests no longercarried on their astronomical observations on its platform. * * Herodotus merely mentions that Xerxes had despoiled the temple; Strabo tells us that Alexander wished to restore it, but that it was in such a state of dilapidation that it would have taken ten thousand men two months merely to remove the rubbish. The palaces of the ancient kings were falling to pieces from lack ofrepairs, though the famous hanging gardens in the citadel were stillshown to strangers. The guides, of course, gave them out to be a deviceof Semiramis, but the well-informed knew that they had been constructedby Nebuchadrezzar for one of his wives the daughter of Oyaxares, whopined for the verdure of her native mountains. "They were square inshape, each side being four hundred feet long; one approached them bysteps leading to terraces placed one above the other, the arrangementof the whole, resembling that of an amphitheatre. Each terrace rested onpillars which, gradually increasing in size, supported the weight ofthe soil and its produce. The loftiest pillar attained a height of fiftyfeet; it reached to the upper part of the garden, its capital being ona level with the balustrades of the boundary wall. The terraces werecovered with a layer of soil of sufficient depth for the roots of thelargest trees; plants of all kinds that delight the eye by their shapeor beauty were grown there. One of the columns was hollowed from topto bottom; it contained hydraulic engines which pumped up quantities ofwater, no part of the mechanism being visible from the outside. "Many travellers were content to note down only such marvels as theyconsidered likely to make their narratives more amusing, but others tookpains to collect information of a more solid character, and beforethey had carried their researches very far, were at once astounded anddelighted with the glimpses they obtained of Chaldęan genius. No doubt, they exaggerated when they went so far as to maintain that all theirlearning came to them originally from Babylon, and that the most famousscholars of Greece, Pherecydes of Scyros, Democritus of Abdera, andPythagoras, * owed the rudiments of philosophy, mathematics, physics, andastrology to the school of the _Magi_. * The story which asserts that Pythagoras served under Nergilos, King of Assyria, is probably based on some similarity of names: thus among the Greek kings of Cyprus, and in the time of Assur-bani-pal, we find one whose name would recall that of Pythagoras, if the accuracy of the reading were beyond question. Yet it is not surprising that they should have believed this to be thecase, when increasing familiarity with the priestly seminaries revealedto them the existence of those libraries of clay tablets in which, sideby side with theoretic treatises dating from two thousand years backand more, were to be found examples of applied mechanics, observations, reckonings, and novel solutions of problems, which generationsof scribes had accumulated in the course of centuries. The Greekastronomers took full advantage of these documents, but it was theirastrologers and soothsayers who were specially indebted to them. Thelatter acknowledged their own inferiority the moment they came intocontact with their Euphratean colleagues, and endeavoured to make goodtheir deficiencies by taking lessons from the latter or persuading themto migrate to Greece. A hundred years later saw the Babylonian Berosusopening at Cos a public school of divination by the stars. Fromthenceforward "Chaldęan" came to be synonymous with "astrologer" or"sorcerer, " and Chaldęan magic became supreme throughout the world atthe very moment when Chaldęa itself was in its death-throes. Nor was its unquestioned supremacy in the black art the sole legacy thatChaldęa bequeathed to the coming generations: its language survived, andreigned for centuries afterwards in the regions subjugated by its arms. The cultivated tongue employed by the scribes of Nineve and Babylonin the palmy days of their race, had long become a sort of literarydialect, used in writings of a lofty character and understood by aselect few, but unintelligible to the common people. The populace intown or country talked an Aramaic jargon, clumsier and more prolixthan Assyrian, but easier to understand. We know how successfully theAramęans had managed to push their way along the Euphrates and intoSyria towards the close of the Hittite supremacy: their successiveencroachments had been favoured, first by the Assyrian, later by theChaldęan conquests, and now they had become sole possessors of theancient Naharaīna, the plains of Cilicia, the basin of the Orontes, andthe country round Damascus; but the true home of the Aramęans was inSyria rather than in the districts of the Lower Euphrates. Even in thetime of the Sargonids their alphabet had made so much headway that atNineveh itself and at Calah it had come into everyday use; when Chaldęansupremacy gave way to that of the Persians, its triumph--in the westernprovinces, at any rate--was complete, and it became the recognisedvehicle of the royal decrees: we come upon it in every direction, onthe coins issued by the satraps of Asia Minor, on the seals of localgovernors or dynasts, on inscriptions or stelę in Egypt, in the lettersof the scribes, and in the rescripts of the great king. From Nisibto Baphia, between the Tigris and the Mediterranean, it graduallysupplanted most of the other dialects--Semitic or otherwise--which hadhitherto prevailed. Phoenician held its ground in the seaports, butHebrew gave way before it, and ended by being restricted to religiouspurposes, as a literary and liturgical language. It was in theneighbourhood of Babylon itself that the Judęan exiles had, during theCaptivity, adopted the Aramaic language, and their return to Canaanfailed to restore either the purity of their own language or the dignityand independence of their religious life. Their colony at Jerusalempossessed few resources; the wealthier Hebrews had, for the most part, remained in Chaldęa, leaving the privilege of repopulating the holy cityto those of their brethren who were less plenteously endowed with thisworld's goods. These latter soon learned to their cost that Zion was notthe ideal city whose "gates shall be open continually; they shall notbe shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the wealth ofthe nations;" far from "sucking the milk of nations and the breast ofkings, "* their fields produced barely sufficient to satisfy the morepressing needs of daily life. "Ye have sown much, and bring in little, "as Jahveh declared to them "ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is nonewarm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag withholes. "** * An anonymous prophet in Isa. Lx. 11-16. ** Hagg. I. 6. They quickly relinquished the work of restoration, finding themselvesforgotten by all--their Babylonian brethren included--in the midst ofthe great events which were then agitating the world, the preparationsfor the conquest of Egypt, the usurpation of the pseudo-Smerdis, theaccession of Darius, the Babylonian and Median insurrections. Possiblythey believed that the Achęmenides had had their day, and that a newChaldęan empire, with a second Nebuchadrezzar at its head, was about toregain the ascendency. It would seem that the downfall of Nadintav-belinspired them with new faith in the future and encouraged them tocomplete their task: in the second year of Darius, two prophets, Haggaiand Zechariah, arose in their midst and lifted up their voices. [Illustration: 337. Jpg CHALDEAN SEAL WITH ARAMAIC INSCRIPTION] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photogravure published in Menant. Zerubbabel, a prince of the royal line, governed Judah in the Persianinterest, and with him was associated the high priest Joshua, who lookedafter the spiritual interests of the community: the reproaches of thetwo prophets aroused the people from their inaction, and induced them toresume their interrupted building operations. Darius, duly informed ofwhat was going on by the governor of Syria, gave orders that they werenot to be interfered with, and four years later the building of thetemple was completed. * * Ezra iv. -vi. ; the account given by Josephus of the two expeditions of Zerubbabel seems to have been borrowed partly from the canonical book, partly from the Apocryphal writing known as the _1st Book of Esdras_. For nearly a century after this the little Jewish republic remainedquiescent. It had slowly developed until it had gradually won backa portion of the former territories of Benjamin and Judah, but itsexpansion southwards was checked by the Idumęans, to whom Nebuchadrezzarhad years before handed over Hebron and Acrabattenź (Akrabbim) as areward for the services they had rendered. On the north its neighbours were the descendants of those Aramaeanexiles whom Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esar-haddon, kings of Assyria, had, on various occasions, installed around Samaria in Mount Ephraim. Atfirst these people paid no reverence to the "God of the land, " so thatJahveh, in order to punish them, sent lions, which spread carnage intheir ranks. Then the King of Assyria allotted them an Israelitishpriest from among his prisoners, who taught them "the law" of Jahveh, and appointed other priests chosen from the people, and showed them howto offer up sacrifices on the ancient high places. * * Kings xvii. 24-40. There do not seem to have been the continual disputes between the inhabitants of Judaea and Samaria before the return of Nehemiah, which the compilers of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah seem to have believed. Thus another Israel began to rise up again, and, at first, the newJudah seems to have been on tolerably friendly terms with it: the twocommunities traded and intermarried with one another, the Samaritanstook part in the religious ceremonies, and certain of their leadersoccupied a court in the temple at Jerusalem. The alliance, however, proved dangerous to the purity of the faith, for the proselytes, whilethey adopted Jahveh and gave Him that supreme place in their devotionswhich was due to "the God of the land, " had by no means entirelyforsworn their national superstitions, and Adrammelek, Nergal, Tartak, Anammelek, and other deities still found worshippers among them. Judah, which in the days of its independence had so often turned aside afterthe gods of Canaan and Moab, was in danger of being led away by theidolatrous practices of its new neighbours; intermarriage with thedaughters of Moab and Ammon, of Philistia and Samaria, was producinga gradual degeneracy: the national language was giving way before theAramaean; unless some one could be found to stem the tide of decadenceand help the people to remount the slope which they were descending, the fate of Judah was certain. A prophet--the last of those whosepredictions have survived to our time--stood forth amid the generallaxity and called the people to account for their transgressions, inthe name of the Eternal, but his single voice, which seemed but afeeble echo of the great prophets of former ages, did not meet witha favourable hearing. Salvation came at length from the Jews outsideJudah, the naturalised citizens of Babylon, a well-informed and wealthybody, occupying high places in the administration of the empire, andsometimes in the favour of the sovereign also, yet possessed by anardent zeal for the religion of their fathers and a steadfast faithin the vitality of their race. One of these, a certain Nehemiah, wasemployed as cupbearer to Artaxerxes II. He was visited at Susa by somemen of Judah whose business had brought them to that city and inquiredof them how matters fared in Jerusalem. Hanani, one of his visitors, replied that "the remnant that are left of the captivity there in theprovince are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalemalso is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire. "Nehemiah took advantage of a moment when the king seemed in a jovialmood to describe the wretched state of his native land in moving terms:he obtained leave to quit Susa and authority to administer the city inwhich his fathers had dwelt. * * Nehemiah i. , ii. This took place in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, about 385 B. C. Nehemiah at once made his way to Jerusalem with such escort asbefitted his dignity, and the news of his mission, and, apparently, the sentiments of rigid orthodoxy professed by him from the beginning, provoked the resentment of the neighbouring potentates against him:Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite, chief of the Samaritans, and Geshem the Bedāwin did their best to thwart him in the execution ofhis plans. He baffled their intrigues by his promptitude in rebuildingthe walls, and when once he had rendered himself safe from any suddenattack, he proceeded with the reforms which he deemed urgent. His tenureof office lasted twelve years--from 384 to 373 B. C. --and during thewhole of that time he refused to accept any of the dues to which he wasentitled, and which his predecessors had received without scruple. Eversince their return from exile, the common people had been impoverishedand paralysed by usury. The poor had been compelled to mortgage theirfields and their vineyards in order to pay the king's taxes; then, whentheir land was gone, they had pledged their sons and their daughters;the moneyed classes of the new Israel thus absorbed the property oftheir poorer brethren, and reduced the latter to slavery. Nehemiahcalled the usurers before him and severely rebuking them for theircovetousness, bade them surrender the interest and capital of existingdebts, and restore the properties which had fallen into their handsowing to their shameful abuse of wealth, and release all those of theirco-religionists whom they had enslaved in default of payment of theirdebts. * His high place in the royal favour doubtless had its effecton those whose cupidity suffered from his zeal, and prevented externalenemies from too openly interfering in the affairs of the community:by the time he returned to the court, in 372 B. C. , after an absence oftwelve years, Jerusalem and its environs had to some extent regainedthe material prosperity of former days. The part played by Nehemiah was, however, mainly political, and the religious problem remained in verymuch the same state as before. The high priests, who alone possessed thepower of solving it, had fallen in with the current that was carryingaway the people, and--latterly, at any rate--had become disqualifiedthrough intermarriage with aliens: what was wanted was a scribe deeplyversed in sacred things to direct them in the right way, and such a mancould be found only in Babylonia, the one country in which the study ofthe ancient traditions still flourished. A certain Ezra, son of Seraiah, presented himself in 369 B. C. , and, as he was a man of some standing, Artaxerxes not only authorised him to go himself, but to take with hima whole company of priests and Lévites and families formerly attached tothe service of the temple. ** The books containing the Law of God andthe history of His people had, since the beginning of the captivity, undergone alterations which had profoundly modified their text andchanged their spirit. * Neh. V. ** Neh. Xiii. 6: "in the two and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes, King of Babylon, I went unto the king. " This work of revision, begun under the influence of Ezekiel, and perhapsby his own followers, had, since his time, been carried on withoutinterruption, and by mingling the juridical texts with narratives ofthe early ages collected from different sources, a lengthy work had beenproduced, very similar in composition and wording to the five Booksof Moses and the Book of Joshua as we now possess them. * It was thisversion of the Revelation of Jahveh that Ezra brought with him fromBabylon in order to instruct the people of Judah, and the firstimpressions received by him at the end of his journey convinced him thathis task would be no light one, for the number of mixed marriages hadbeen so great as to demoralise not only the common people, but eventhe priests and leading nobles as well. Nevertheless, at a generalassembly** of the people he succeeded in persuading them to consent tothe repudiation of alien wives. * This is the priestly revision presupposed by recent critics; here again, in order to keep within the prescribed limits of space, I have been compelled to omit much that I should have liked to add in regard to the nature of this work and the spirit in which it was carried out. ** Ezra, vii. -xi. , where the dates given do not form part of the work as written by Ezra, but have been introduced later by the editor of the book as it now stands. But this preliminary success would have led to nothing unless hecould secure formal recognition of the rigorous code of which he hadconstituted himself the champion, and protracted negotiations werenecessary before he could claim a victory on this point as well ason the other. At length, about 367 B. C. , more than a year after hisarrival, he gained his point, and the covenant between Jahveh and Hispeople was sealed with ceremonies modelled on those which had attendedthe promulgation of Deuteronomy in the time of Josiah. On the first dayof the seventh month, a little before the autumn festival, the peopleassembled at Jerusalem in "the broad place which was before the watergate. " Ezra mounted a wooden pulpit, and the chief among the priests satbeside him. He "opened the book in the sight of all the people... And... All the people stood up: and Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered 'Amen, amen!' with the lifting up of theirhands; and they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with theirfaces to the ground. " Then began the reading of the sacred text. As eachclause was read, the Lévites stationed here and there among the peopleinterpreted and explained its provisions in the vulgar tongue, so asto make their meaning clear to all. The prolix enumeration of sins andtheir expiation, and threats expressed in certain chapters, producedamong the crowd the same effect of nervous terror as had once beforebeen called forth by the precepts and maledictions of Deuteronomy. Thepeople burst into tears, and so vehement were their manifestations ofdespair, that all the efforts of Ezra and his colleagues were needed tocalm them. Ezra took advantage of this state of fervour to demand theimmediate application of the divine ordinances. And first of all, it was"found written in the law, how that the Lord had commanded by Mosesthat the children of Israel should dwell in booths. " For, seven daysJerusalem was decked with leaves; tabernacles of olive, myrtle, and palmbranches rose up on all sides, on the roofs of houses, in courtyards, in the courts of the temple, at the gates of the city. Then, on the 27thday of the same month, the people put on mourning in order to confesstheir own sins and the sins of their fathers. Finally, to crown thewhole, Ezra and his followers required the assembly to swear a solemnoath that they would respect "the law of Moses, " and regulate theirconduct by it. * After the first enthusiasm was passed, a reactionspeedily set in. Many even among the priests thought that Ezra had gonetoo far in forbidding marriage with strangers, and that the increase ofthe tithes and sacrifices would lay too heavy a burden on the nation. The Gentile women reappeared, the Sabbath was no longer observed eitherby the Israelites or aliens; Eliashīb, son of the high priest Joiakim, did not even deprive Tobiah the Ammonite of the chamber in thetemple which he had formerly prepared for him, and things werealmost imperceptibly drifting back into the same state as before thereformation, when Nehemiah returned from Susa towards the close of thereign of Artaxerxes. He lost no time in re-establishing respect for thelaw, and from henceforward opposition, if it did not entirely die out, ceased to manifest itself in Jerusalem. ** * Neh. Viii. , ix. , with an interpolation in ver. 9 of chap, viii. , inserted in order to identify Nehemiah with the representative of the Persian government. ** Neh. Xiii. Elsewhere, however, among the Samaritans, Indumęans, and Philistines, itcontinued as keen as ever, and the Jews themselves were imprudent enoughto take part in the political revolutions that were happening aroundthem in their corner of the empire. Their traditions tell how theywere mixed up in the rising of the Phoenician cities against Ochus, andsuffered the penalty; when Sidon capitulated, they were punished withthe other rebels, the more recalcitrant among them being deported intoHyrcania. Assyria was nothing more than a name, Babylon and Phoenicia were growingweaker every day; the Jews, absorbed in questions of religious ethics, were deficient in material power, and had not as yet attained sufficientmoral authority to exercise an influence over the eastern world: theEgypt indestructible had alone escaped the general shipwreck, andseemed fated to survive her rivals for a long time. Of all these ancientnations it was she who appealed most strongly to the imagination of theGreeks: Greek traders, mercenaries, scholars, and even tourists wanderedfreely within her borders, and accounts of the strange and marvellousthings to be found there were published far and wide in the writingsof Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, and Hellanicus ofLesbos. As a rule, they entered the country from the west, as Europeantourists and merchants still do; but Eakōtis, the first port at whichthey touched, was a mere village, and its rocky Pharos had no claim todistinction beyond the fact that it had been mentioned by Homer. From hence they followed the channel of the Canopic arm, and asthey gradually ascended, they had pointed out to them Anthylla, Arkandrupolis, and Gyna> copolis, townships dependent on Naucratis, lying along the banks, or situated some distance off on one of the minorcanals; then Naucratis itself, still a flourishing place, in spiteof the rebellions in the Delta and the suppressive measures of thePersians. All this region seemed to them to be merely an extension ofGreece under the African sky: to their minds the real Egypt began atSais, a few miles further eastwards. Sais was full in memories of theXXVIth dynasty; there they had pointed out to them the tombs ofthe Pharaohs in the enclosure of Nit, the audience hall in whichPsammetichus II. Received the deputation of the Eleians, the prisonwhere the unfortunate Apries had languished after his defeat. Thegateways of the temple of Nit seemed colossal to eyes accustomed to themodest dimensions of most Greek sanctuaries; these were, moreover, thefirst great monuments that the strangers had seen since they landed, andthe novelty of their appearance had a good deal to do with the keennessof the impression produced. The goddess showed herself in hospitableguise to the visitors; she welcomed them all, Greek or Persian, at herfestivals, and initiated them into several of her minor rites, withoutdemanding from them anything beyond tolerance on certain points ofdoctrine. [Illustration: 346. Jpg FOUNTAIN AND SCHOOL OF THE MOTHER OF LITTLEMOHAMAD] Her dual attributes as wielder of the bow and shuttle had inspired theGreeks with the belief that she was identical with that one of their owngoddesses who most nearly combined in her person this complex minglingof war and industry: in her they Fountain and School of the Mother ofLittle Mohammed worshipped the prototype of their own Pallas. On theevening of the 17th day of Thoth, Herodotus saw the natives, rich andpoor, placing on the fronts of their dwellings large flat lamps filledwith a mixture of salt and oil which they kept alight all night inhonour of Osiris and of the dead. * * In my opinion it is not the festivals of Athyr that are here referred to, but those of the month of Thoth, when, as the inscriptions show, it was the practice to _light the new fire_, according to the ritual, after first extinguishing the fire of the previous year, not only in the temple of the god, but in all the houses of the city. He made his way into the dwelling of the ineffable god, and there, unobserved among the crowd, he witnessed scenes from the divine liferepresented by the priests on the lake by the light of torches, episodesof his passion, mourning, and resurrection. The priests did not disclosetheir subtler mysteries before barbarian eyes, nor did they teach theinner meaning of their dogmas, but the little they did allow himto discern filled the traveller with respect and wonder, recallingsometimes by their resemblance to them the mysteries in which he wasaccustomed to take part in his own country. Then, as now, but littleattention was paid to the towns in the centre and east of the Delta;travellers endeavoured to visit one or two of them as types, andcollected as much information as they could about the remainder. Herodotus and his rivals attached little importance to those details oflandscape which possess so much attraction for the modern tourist. Theybestowed no more than a careless glance on the chapels scattered up anddown the country like the Mohammedan shrines at the present day, and thewaters extending on all sides beneath the acacias and palm trees duringthe inundation, or the fellahin trotting along on their little assesbeside the pools, did not strike them as being of sufficient interest todeserve passing mention in an account of their travels. [Illustration: 348. Jpg MODERN MOHAMMEDAN SHEKHS TOMBS] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Gautier. They passed by the most picturesque villages with indifference, andit was only when they reached some great city, or came upon someexceptionally fine temple or eccentric deity, that their curiosity wasaroused. Mendes worshipped its patron god in the form of a live ram, *and bestowed on all members of the same species some share of theveneration it lavished on the divine animal. The inhabitants ofAtarbźkhis, ** on the island of Prosopitis, gave themselves up to theworship of the bull. * Herodotus says that both the goats and the god were named Mendes in Egyptian, but he is here confusing ordinary goats with the special goat which was supposed to contain the soul of Osiris. It was the latter that the Egyptians named after the god himself, Baīnibdīduīt, i. E. _the soul of the master of the city of Diduīt_. ** The old explanation of this name as the _City of Hathor_ has been rightly rejected as inconsistent with one of the elementary rules of hieroglyphic grammar. The name, when properly divided into its three constituent parts, means literally _the Castle of horus the Sparrow-hawk, or Hat-har- baki_ When one of these animals died in the neighbourhood they buried it, leaving one horn above the earth in order to mark the spot, and onceevery year the boats of Atarbźkhis made a tour round the island tocollect the skeletons or decaying bodies, in order that they might beinterred in a common burying-place. [Illustration: 349. Jpg PART OF THE INUNDATION IN A PALM GROVE] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Gautier. The people of Busiris patronised a savage type of religion. During thefestival of Isis they gave themselves up to fierce conflicts, theirfanatical fury even infecting strangers who chanced to be present. TheCarians also had hit upon a means of outdoing the extravagance of thenatives themselves: like the Shiite Mohammedans of the present dayat the festival of the Hassanźn, they slashed their faces with knivesamidst shrieks and yells. At Paprźmis a pitched battle formed part ofthe religious observances: it took place, however, under certain specialconditions. On the evening of the festival of Anhurīt, as the sun wentdown, a number of priests performed a hasty sacrifice in the temple, while the remainder of the local priesthood stationed themselves atthe gate armed with heavy cudgels. When the ceremony was over, thecelebrants placed the statue of the god on a four-wheeled car as thoughabout to take it away to some other locality, but their colleaguesat the gate opposed its departure and barred the way. It was at thisjuncture that the faithful intervened; they burst in the door and setupon the priests with staves, the latter offering a stout resistance. The cudgels were heavy, the arms that wielded them lusty, and the fightlasted a long time, yet no one was ever killed in the fray--at least, so the priests averred--and I am at a loss to understand why Herodotus, who was not a native of Paprźmis, should have been so unkind as to doubttheir testimony. * * The god whom the Greeks identified with their Ares was Anhurīt, as is proved by one of the Leyden Papyri. So, too, in modern times at Cairo, it used to be affirmed that no Mohammedan who submitted to the dōseh was ever seriously injured by the hoofs of the horse which trampled over the bodies extended on the ground. [Illustration: 350. Jpg EPHEMERAL HOVELS OF CLAY OR DRIED BRICKS] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Haussoullier. It is nearly always in connection with some temple or religious festivalthat he refers to the towns of the Delta, and, indeed, in most of theminor cities of Egypt, just as in those of modern Italy there is littleto interest visitors except the religious monuments or ceremonies. Herodotus went to Tanis or Mendes as we go to Orvieto or Loretto, toadmire the buildings or pay our devotions at a famous shrine. Moreoften than not the place was nothing in itself, consisting merely of afortified enclosure, a few commonplace houses occupied by the wealthyinhabitants or by government officials, and on mounds of ancient_debris_, the accumulation of centuries, a number of ephemeral hovelsbuilt of clay, or dried bricks, divided into irregular blocks by windingalleys. The whole local interest was centred in the sanctuary and itsinmates, human and divine. The traveller made his way in as best hecould, went into ecstasies over the objects that were shown to him, andas soon as he had duly gone the rounds, set out for the next place onhis list, deeming himself lucky if he happened to arrive during oneof the annual fairs, such as that of Bubastis, for instance. Bandsof pilgrims flocked in from all parts of Egypt; the river craft wereoverflowing with men and women, who converted the journey into one longcarnival. Every time the vessel put in to land, the women rushed onshore, amid the din of castanets and flutes, and ran hither and thitherchallenging the women of the place with abuse to dance against them withuplifted garments. To the foreigners there was little to distinguish thefestival of Bastīt from many other Egyptian ceremonies of the kind; itconsisted of a solemn procession, accompanied by the singing of hymnsand playing of harps, dancing and sacrifices, but for weeks before andafter it the town was transformed into one vast pleasure-ground. Thepeople of Bubastis took a certain pride in declaring that more wine wasdrunk in it during a single day than during the rest of the whole year. Butō enjoyed exceptional popularity among the Greeks in Egypt. Itspatron goddess, the Isis who took refuge amid the pools in a movingthicket of reeds and lotus, in order that she might protect her sonHorus from the jealousy of Typhon, reminded them of the story of Latonaand the cycle of the Delian legends; they, visited her in crowds, and her oracle became to most of them what that of Delos was to theirbrethren in Europe. At Butō they found a great temple, similar to allEgyptian temples, a shrine in which the statues of the goddess continuedher mysterious existence, and, in the midst of the sacred lake, thelittle island of Khemmis, which was said to float hither and thitherupon the waters. Herodotus did not venture to deny this absolutely, but states that he had never seen it change its position or even stir:perhaps his incredulity may have been quickened by the fact that thismiracle had already been inquired into by Hecatasus of Miletus, anauthor who was his pet aversion. The priests of Butō declared that theirprophets had foretold everything that had happened for a long time past, and for each event they had a version which redounded to the credit oftheir goddess: she had shown Pheron how he might recover his sight, had foretold how long the reign of Mykerinos would last, had informedPsammetichus that he would be saved by men of brass rising out of thesea, and had revealed to Cambyses that he should die in a town namedEcbatana. Her priests had taken an active part in the revolt ofKhabbīsha against Darius, and had lost a goodly portion of theirtreasure and endowments for their pains. They still retained theirprestige, however, in spite of the underhand rivalry of the oracleof Zeus Ammon. The notaries of the Libyan deity could bring forwardmiracles even more marvellous than those credited to the EgyptianLatona, and in the case of many of the revolutions which had taken placeon the banks of the Nile, a version of the legend in his honour wascirculated side by side with the legends of Butō. The latter city layon the very outskirts of one of those regions which excited the greatestcuriosity among travellers, the almost inaccessible Bucolicum, where, it was said, no rebel ever failed to find a safe refuge from his alienpursuers. The Egyptians of the marshes were a very courageous race, but savage, poor, and ill fed. They drank nothing but beer, and obtainedtheir oil not from the olive, but from the castor-oil plant, * and havingno corn, lived on the seeds or roots of the lotus, or even on the stalksof the papyrus, which they roasted or boiled. * It seems, moreover, that this custom was not confined to the Delta; Herodotus, in contrasting the custom of Bucolicum with that of the rest of Egypt, was evidently thinking of Sais, Memphis, and other great cities in which he had resided, where foreign olive oil obtained from Greece or Syria was generally used. Fish was their staple article of food, and this they obtained inconsiderable quantity from Lake Menzaleh, the lagoons along the coast, and the canals or pools left by the inundation. But little was knownof their villages or monuments, and probably they were not worth thetrouble of a visit after those of the cities of the plain: endlessstories were told of feats of brigandage and of the mysterioushiding-places which these localities offered to every outlaw, one of themost celebrated being the isle of Elbō, where the blind Anysis defiedthe power of Ethiopia for thirty years, and in which the first Amyrtasusfound refuge. With the exception of a few merchants or adventurerswho visited them with an eye to gain, most travellers coming from orreturning to Asia avoided their territory, and followed the militaryroad along the Pelusiac arm of the Nile from Pehisium to Daphno or Zalu, and from Daphnę or Zalu to Bubastis. A little below Kerkasoron, nearthe apex of the Delta, the pyramids stood out on the horizon, lookinginsignificant at first, but afterwards so lofty that, during the periodof inundation, when the whole valley, from the mountains of Arabia tothose of Libya, was nothing but one vast river, a vessel seemed tosail in their shadow for a long time before it reached their base. Thetraveller passed Heliopolis on his left with its temple of the Sun, next the supposed sources of the Northern Nile, the quarries of the RedMountain, and then entering at length the Nile itself, after a journeyof some hours, came to anchor by the quays of Memphis. To the Greeks of that time, Memphis was very much what Cairo is tous, viz. The typical Oriental city, the quintessence and chiefrepresentative of ancient Egypt. In spite of the disasters which hadoverwhelmed it during the last few centuries, it was still a verybeautiful city, ranking with Babylon as one of the largest in the world. Its religious festivals, especially those in honour of Apis, attractednumberless pilgrims to it at certain seasons of the year, and hosts offoreigners, recruited from every imaginable race of the old continent, resorted to it for purposes of trade. Most of the nationalities whofrequented it had a special quarter, which was named after them; thePhoenicians occupied the _Tyrian Camp_, the Greeks and Carians the_Hellenic Wall and Carian Wall_, and there were Oaromemphites orHellenomemphites side by side with the native inhabitants. A Persiangarrison was stationed within the White Wall, ready to execute thesatrap's orders in the event of rebellion, and could have held out fora long time even after the rest of the country had fallen into the handsof the insurgents. Animals which one would scarcely have expectedto find in the streets of a capital, such as cows, sheep, and goats, wandered about unheeded in the most crowded thoroughfares; for thecommon people, instead of living apart from their beasts, as the Greeksdid, stabled them in their own houses. Nor was this the only customwhich must have seemed strange in the eyes of a newly arrived visitor, for the Egyptians might almost have been said to make a point of doingeverything differently from other nation's. The baker, seen at thekneading-trough inside his shop, worked the dough with his foot; on theother hand, the mason used no trowel in applying his mortar, and thepoorer classes scraped up handfuls of mud mixed with dung when they hadoccasion to repair the walls of their hovels. In Greece, even the verypoorest retired to their houses and ate with closed doors; the Egyptiansfelt no repugnance at eating and drinking in the open air, declaringthat unbecoming and improper acts should be performed in secret, butseemly acts in public. The first blind alley they came to, a recessbetween two hovels, the doorstep of a house or temple, any of theseseemed to them a perfectly natural place to dine in. Their bill offare was not a sumptuous one. A sort of flat pancake somewhat bitter intaste, and made--not of corn or barley--but of spelt, a little oil, anonion or a leek, with an occasional scrap of meat or poultry, washeddown by a jug of beer or wine; there was nothing here to tempt theforeigner, and, besides, it would not have been thought right for himto invite himself. A Greek who lived on the flesh of the cow was lookedupon as unclean in the highest degree; no Egyptian would have thought ofusing the same pot or knife with him, or of kissing him on the mouth byway of greeting. Moreover, Egyptian etiquette did not tolerate the samefamiliarities as the Greek: two friends on catching sight of one anotherpaused before they met, bowed, then clasped one another round the kneesor pretended to do so. Young people gave way to an old man, or, ifseated, rose to let him pass. The traveller recalled the fact that theSpartans behaved in the same way, and approved this mark of deference;but nothing in his home-life had prepared him for the sight ofrespectable women coming and going as they pleased, without escort andunveiled, carrying burdens on their shoulders (whereas the men carriedthem on their heads), going to market, keeping stalls or shops, whiletheir husbands or fathers stayed comfortably at home, wove cloth, kneaded the potter's clay or turned the wheel, and worked at theirtrades; no wonder that they were ready to believe that the man was theslave, and the wife the mistress of the family. Some historians tracedthe origin of these customs back to Osiris, others only as far asSesostris: Sesostris was the last resource of Greek historians when theygot into difficulties. The city was crowded with monuments; there wasthe temple of the Phoenician Astarte, in which priests of Syrian descenthad celebrated the mysteries of the great goddess ever since the daysof the XVIIIth dynasty; then there was the temple of Rā, the temple ofAmon, the temple of Tamu, the temple of Bastīt, and the temple of Isis. * * This list is taken mainly from one of the mutilated letters found on the back of the _Sallier Papyrus_. The Phoenician Astarte, called a foreign Aphrodite by Herodotus, was regarded by the Egyptians as a counterpart of Bastīt, lady of Onkhtoui. The temple of Phtah, as yet intact, provided the visitor with aspectacle scarcely less admirable than that offered by the temple of theTheban Amon at Karnak. The kings had modified the original plan as eachthought best, one adding obelisks or colossal statues, another a pylon, a third a pillared hall. Completed in this way by the labours of a scoreof dynasties, it formed, as it were, a microcosm of Egyptian history, inwhich each image, inscription and statue, aroused the attention of thecurious. They naturally desired to learn who were the strangely dressedraces shown struggling in a battle scene, the name of the king who hadconquered them, and the reasons which had led him to construct this orthat part of a monument, and there were plenty of busybodies ready tosatisfy, as far as they could, the curiosity of visitors. Interpreterswere at hand who bartered such information as they possessed, andthe modern traveller who has had occasion to employ the services of adragoman will have no difficulty in estimating the value of intelligencethus hawked about in ancient times. Priests of the lower class, doorkeepers and sacristans were trained to act as _ciceroni_, and knewthe main outlines of the history of the temple in which they lived. Menés planned it, Moeris added the northern propylę, Ehampsinitus thoseon the west, Psammetichus the south, Asychis those on the east, the mostnoteworthy of them all. A native of Memphis, born at the foot of thepyramids, had been familiar with the names of Menés and Cheops fromchildhood; he was consequently apt to attribute to them everything ofimportance achieved by the Pharaohs of the old days. Menés had built thetemple, Menés had founded the city, Menés had created the soil onwhich the city stood, and preserved it from floods by his dykes. Thethoughtful traveller would assent, for had he not himself observed theaction of the mud; a day's journey from the coast one could not let downa plummet without drawing it up covered with a blackish slime, a clearproof that the Nile continued to gain upon the sea. Menés, at allevents, had really existed; but as to Asychis, Moris, Proteus, Pheron, and most of the characters glibly enumerated by Herodotus, it would belabour lost to search for their names among the inscriptions; they aremere puppets of popular romance, some of their names, such as Pirāui orPruti, being nothing more than epithets employed by the story-tellers toindicate in general terms the heroes of their tales. We can understandhow strangers, placed at the mercy of their dragoman, were misled bythis, and tempted to transform each title into a man, taking Pruti andPirāui to be Pharaoh Proteus and Pharaoh Pheron, each of them celebratedfor his fabulous exploits. The guides told Herodotus, and Herodotusretails to us, as sober historical facts, the remedy employed by thisunhistorical Pheron in order to recover his sight; the adventures ofParis and Helen at the court of Proteus, * and the droll tricks played bya thief at the expense of the simple Ehampsinitus. * Some dragomans identified the Helen of the Homeric legend with the "foreign Aphrodite" who had a temple in the Tyrian quarter at Memphis, and who was really a Semitic divinity. [Illustration: 359. Jpg THE STEP PYRAMID SEEN FROM THE GROVE OP PALMTREES TO THE NORTH OF SAQQARAH] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Haussoullier. The excursions made by the Greek traveller in the environs of Memphiswere very similar to those taken by modern visitors to Cairo: on theopposite bank of the Nile there was Heliopolis with its temple of Rā, then there were the quarries of Turah, which had been worked from timeimmemorial, yet never exhausted, and from which the monuments he hadbeen admiring, and the very Pyramids themselves had been taken stone bystone. * * These are "the quarries in the Arabian Mountain, " mentioned by Herodotus without indication of the local name. The Sphinx probably lay hidden beneath the sand, and the nearestPyramids, those at Saqqarah, were held in small esteem by visitors;*they were told as they passed by that the step Pyramid was the mostancient of all, having been erected by Uenephes, one of the kings of thefirst dynasty, and they asked no further questions. * Herodotus does not mention it, nor does any other writer of the Greek period. Their whole curiosity was reserved for the three giants at Gizeh andtheir inmates, Cheops, Chephren, Mykerinos, and the fair Nitokris withthe rosy cheeks. Through all the country round, at Heliopolis, and evenin the Fayum itself, they heard the same names that had been dinned intotheir ears at Memphis; the whole of the monuments were made to fit intoa single cycle of popular history, and what they learned at one placecompleted, or seemed to complete, what they had learned at another. I cannot tell whether many of them cared to stray much beyond LakeMoris: the repressive measures of Ochus had, as it would appear, interrupted for a time the regular trade which, ever since the Saitekings of the XXVIth dynasty, had been carried on by the Greeks with theOases, by way of Abydos. A stranger who ventured as far as the Thebaidwould have found himself in the same plight as a European of the lastcentury who undertook to reach the first cataract. Their pointof departure--Memphis or Cairo--was very much the same; theirdestinations--Elephantine and Assuan--differed but little. They employedthe same means of transport, for, excepting the cut of the sails, themodern dahabeah is an exact counterpart of the pleasure and passengerboats shown on the monuments. Lastly, they set out at the same time ofyear, in November or December, after the floods had subsided. The samelength of time was required for the trip; it took a month to reachAssuan from Cairo if the wind-were favourable, and if only suchstoppages were made as were strictly necessary for taking in freshprovisions. Pococke, having left Cairo on the 6th of December, 1737, about midday, was at Akhmīm by the 17th. He set sail again on the 18th, stayed at Thebes from the 13th of January, 1738, till the 17th, andfinally moored at Assuan on the evening of January 20th, making inall forty-five days, fourteen of which were spent at variousstopping-places. If the diary of a Greek excursionist or tourist hadcome down to us, we should probably find in it entries of a very similarkind. * The departure from Memphis would take place in November orDecember; ten or twelve days later the traveller would find himselfat Panopolis;** from Panopolis to Elephantine, stopping at Coptos andThebes, would take about a month, allowing time for a stay at Thebes, and returning to Memphis in February or March. * Herodotus fixes twenty days for the voyage from Sais to Elephantine. This period of time must be probably correct, since at the present day dahabeahs constantly run from Cairo to the second cataract and back in two months, including stoppages of ten days to a fortnight for seeing the monuments. The twenty days of Herodotus represent the minimum duration of the voyage, without taking into account the stoppages and accidents which often delay sailing vessels on the Nile. Nine days, which Herodotus gives as the time for reaching Thebes, is not sufficient, if the voyage is undertaken in the usual way, stopping every evening for the night; but it would be possible if the navigation were uninterrupted day and night. This is now rarely done, but it might have been frequent in ancient times, especially in the service of the State. ** It would seem clear that Herodotus stopped at Panopolis and had communications with the people of the town. [Panopolis or Khemmis is the present Ekhmīm. --Tr. ] [Illustration: 362a. Jpg LONG STRINGS OF LADEN VESSELS] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Gautier. The greater part of the time was employed in getting from one point toanother, and the necessity of taking advantage of a favourable wind ingoing up the river, often obliged the travellers to neglect more thanone interesting locality. [Illustration: 302b. Jpg THE VAST SHEET OF WATER IN THE MIDDAY HEAT] The Greek was not so keenly alive to the picturesqueness of the scenesthrough which he passed as the modern visitor, and in the account ofhis travels he took no note of the long lines of laden boats going up ordown stream, nor of the vast sheet of water glowing in the midday sun, nor of the mountains honeycombed with tombs and quarries, at the foot ofwhich he would be sailing day after day. What interested him above allthings was information with regard to the sources of the immense riveritself, and the reasons for its periodic inundation, and, according tothe mental attitude impressed on him by his education, he accepted themythological solution offered by the natives, or he sought for a morenatural one in the physical lore of his own _savants_: thus he was toldthat the Nile took its rise at Elephantine, between the two rocks calledKrōphi and Mōphi, and in showing them to him his informant would addthat Psammetichus I. Had attempted to sound the depth of the river atthis point, but had failed to fathom it. At the few places where thepilot of the barque put in to port, the population showed themselvesunfriendly, and refused to hold any communication with the Greeks. [Illustration: 363. Jpg the mountains honeycombed with tombs ANDQuarries] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Gautier. The interpreters, who were almost all natives of the Delta, were notalways familiar with the people and customs of the Said, and felt almostas completely foreign at Thebes as did their employers. Their officewas confined to translating the information furnished by the inhabitantswhen the latter were sufficiently civilised to hold communication withthe travellers. What most astonished Herodotus at Panopolis was thetemple and the games held in honour, so he believed, of Perseus, the sonof Danaė. These exercises terminated in an attempt to climb a regular"greasy pole" fixed in the ground, and strengthened right and left bythree rows of stays attached to the mast at different heights; as forPerseus, he was the ithyphallic god of the locality, Mīnu himself, oneof whose epithets--Pehresu, the runner--was confounded by the Greek earwith the name of the hero. The dragomans, enlarging on this mistakenidentity, imagined that the town was the birthplace of Danaos andLyncseus; that Perseus, returning from Libya with the head of Medusa, had gone out of his way to visit the cradle of his family, and that hehad instituted the games in remembrance of his stay there. Thebes hadbecome the ghost of its former self; the Persian governors had neglectedthe city, and its princesses and their ministers were so impoverishedthat they were unable to keep up its temples and palaces. Herodotusscarcely mentions it, and we can hardly wonder at it: he had visitedthe still flourishing Memphis, where the temples were cared for andwere filled with worshippers. What had Thebes to show him in the way ofmarvels which he had not already seen, and that, too, in a better stateof preservation? His Theban ciceroni also told him the same stories thathe had heard in Lower Egypt, and he states that their information agreedin the main with that which he had received at Memphis and Heliopolis, which made it unnecessary to repeat it at length. Two or three thingsonly appeared to him worthy of mention. His admiration was first rousedby the 360 statues of the high priests of Amon which had already excitedthe wonder of his rival Hecataeus; he noted that all these personageswere, without exception, represented as mere men, each the son ofanother man, and he took the opportunity of ridiculing the vanity of hiscompatriots, who did not hesitate to inscribe the name of a god at thehead of their genealogies, removed by some score of generations onlyfrom their own. On the other hand, the temple servitors related to himhow two Theban priestesses, carried off by the Phoenicians and sold, onein Libya and the other in Greece, had set up the first oracles knownin those two countries: Herodotus thereupon remembered the story he hadheard in Epirus of two black doves which had flown away from Thebes, onetowards the Oasis of Ammon, the other in the direction of Dodona; thelatter had alighted on an old beech tree, and in a human voice hadrequested that a temple consecrated to Zeus should be founded on thespot. * * This indicates a confusion in the minds of the Egyptian dragomans with the two brooding birds of Osiris, Isis and Nephthys, considered as _Zarait_, that is to say, as two birds of a different species, according to the different traditions either vultures, rooks, or doves. Herodotus is quite overcome with joy at the thought that Greekdivination could thus be directly traced to that of Egypt, for like mostof his contemporaries, he felt that the Hellenic cult was ennobled bythe fact of its being derived from the Egyptian. The traveller on theNile had to turn homewards on reaching Elephantine, as that was thestation of the last Persian garrison. Nubia lay immediately beyond thecataract, and the Ethiopians at times crossed the frontier and carriedtheir raids as far as Thebes. Elephantine, like Assuan at the presentday, was the centre of a flourishing trade. Here might be seenKushites from Napata or Meroė, negroes from the Upper Nile and the Bahrel-Ghazal, and Ammonians, from all of whom the curious visitor mightglean information while frequenting the bazaars. The cataract wasnavigable all the year round, and the natives in its vicinity enjoyedthe privilege of piloting freight boats through its difficult channel. It took four days to pass through it, instead of the three, or eventwo, which suffice at the present day. Above it, the Nile spread outand resembled a lake dotted over with islands, several of which, suchas Phike and Biggeh, contained celebrated temples, which were as muchfrequented by the Ethiopians as by the Egyptians. Correctly speaking, it was not Egypt herself that the Greeks saw, but her external artistic aspect and the outward setting of Egyptiancivilisation. The vastness of her monuments, the splendour of her tombs, the pomp of her ceremonies, the dignity and variety of her religiousformulas, attracted their curiosity and commanded their respect: thewisdom of the Egyptians had passed into a proverb with them, as it hadwith the Hebrews. But if they had penetrated behind the scenes, theywould have been obliged to acknowledge that beneath this attractiveexterior there was hopeless decay. As with all creatures when they havepassed their prime, Egypt had begun to grow old, and was daily losingher elasticity and energy. Her spirit had sunk into a torpor, shehad become unresponsive to her environment, and could no longer adaptherself to the form she had so easily acquired in her youth: it was asmuch as she could do to occupy fully the narrower limits to which shehad been reduced, and to maintain those limits unbroken. The instinctwhich made her shrink from the intrusion of foreign customs and ideas, or even mere contact with nations of recent growth, was not the mereoutcome of vanity. She realised that she maintained her integrity onlyby relying on the residue of her former solidarity and on the force ofcustom. The slightest disturbance of the equilibrium established amongher members, instead of strengthening her, would have robbed her of thevigour she still possessed, and brought about her dissolution. [Illustration: 367. Jpg DARIUS III. ] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des Médailles. She owed whatever activity she possessed to impulses imparted to her bythe play of her ancient mechanism--a mechanism so stable in its action, and so ingeniously constructed, that it had still a reserve of powerwithin it sufficient to keep the whole in motion for centuries, providedthere was no attempt to introduce new wheels among the old. She hadnever been singularly distinguished for her military qualities; not thatshe was cowardly, and shrank from facing death, but because she lackedenergy and enthusiasm for warlike enterprise. The tactics and armamentsby which she had won her victories up to her prime, had at length becomefetters which she was no longer inclined to shake off, and even if shewas still able to breed a military caste, she was no longer able toproduce armies fit to win battles without the aid of mercenaries. Inorder to be successful in the field, she had to associate with her owntroops recruits from other countries--Libyans, Asiatics, and Greeks, whoserved to turn the scale. The Egyptians themselves formed a compact bodyin this case, and bearing down upon the enemy already engaged by themercenaries, broke through his ranks by their sheer weight, or, if theycould not accomplish this, they stood their ground bravely, taking toflight only when the vacancies in their ranks showed them that furtherresistance was impossible. The machinery of government, like theorganisation of their armies, had become antiquated and degenerate. [Illustration: 368. Jpg AN ELEPHANT ARMED FOR WAR] Drawn by Boudier, from a little terra-cotta group from Myrrhina now in the Louvre. This object dates from the time of the kings of Pergamos, and the soldier round whom the elephant winds his trunk in order to dash him to the ground is a Gaul of Asia Minor. The nobility were as turbulent as in former times, and the royalauthority was as powerless now as of old to assert itself in the absenceof external help, or when treason was afoot among the troops. Religionalone maintained its ascendency, and began to assume to itselfthe loyalty once given to the Pharaoh, and the devotion previouslyconsecrated to the fatherland. The fellahīn had never fully realised thedegradation involved in serving a stranger, and what they detested inthe Persian king was not exactly the fact that he was a Persian. Theirnational pride, indeed, always prompted them to devise some meansof connecting the foreign monarch with their own solar line, and totransform an Achęmenian king into a legitimate Pharaoh. That which wasespecially odious to them in a Cambyses or an Ochus was the disdainwhich such sovereigns displayed for their religion, and the persecutionto which they subjected the immortals. They accustomed themselveswithout serious repining to have no longer one of their own race uponthe throne, and to behold their cities administered by Asiatics, butthey could not understand why the foreigner preferred his own gods, and would not admit Amon, Phtah, Horus, and Rā to the rank of supremedeities. Ochus had, by his treatment of the Apis and the other divineanimals, put it out of his power ever to win their good will. Hisbrutality had made an irreconcilable enemy of that state which alonegave signs of vitality among the nations of the decaying East. This wasall the more to be regretted, since the Persian empire, in spite of theaccession of power which it had just manifested, was far from havingregained the energy which had animated it, not perhaps in the timeof Darius, but at all events under the first Xerxes. The army and thewealth of the country were doubtless still intact--an army and a revenuewhich, in spite of all losses, were still the largest in the world--butthe valour of the troops was not proportionate to their number. Theformer prowess of the Persians, Medians, Bactrians, and other tribes ofIran showed no degeneracy: these nations still produced the same raceof brave and hardy foot-soldiers, the same active and intrepid horsemen;but for a century past there had not been the improvements either inthe armament of the troops or in the tactics of the generals which werenecessary to bring them up to the standard of excellence of the Greekarmy. The Persian king placed great faith in extraordinary militarymachines. He believed in the efficacy of chariots armed with scythes;besides this, his relations with India had shown him what use hisOriental neighbours made of elephants, and having determined to employthese animals, he had collected a whole corps of them, from which he. Hoped great things. In spite of the addition of these novel recruits, itwas not on the Asiatic contingents that he chiefly relied in the eventof war, but on the mercenaries who' were hired at great expense, and whoformed the chief support of his power. From the time of Artaxerxes II. Onwards, it was the Greek hoplites and peltasts who had always decidedthe issue of the Persian battles. The expeditions both by land andsea had been under the conduct of Athenian or Spartan generals--Conon, Chabrias, Iphi-crates, Agesilas, Timotheus, and their pupils; and againalso it was to the Greeks--to the Rhodian Mentor and to, Memnon--thatOchus had owed his successes. The older nations--Egypt, Syria, Chaldęa, and Elam--had all had their day of supremacy; they had declined in thecourse of centuries, and Assyria had for a short time united them underher rule. On the downfall of Assyria, the Iranians had succeeded toher heritage, and they had built up a single empire comprising all thestates which had preceded them in Western Asia; but decadence had fallenupon them also, and when they had been masters for scarcely two shortcenturies, they were in their turn threatened with destruction. Theirrule continued to be universal, not by reason of its inherent vigour, but on account of the weakness of their subjects and neighbours, and adetermined attack on any of the frontiers of the empire would doubtlesshave resulted in its overthrow. Greece herself was too demoralised to cause Darius any grave anxiety. Not only had she renounced all intention of attacking the great king inhis own domain, as in the days of the Athenian hegemony, when she couldimpose her own conditions of peace, but her perpetual discords hadyielded her an easy prey to Persia, and were likely to do so more andmore. The Greek cities chose the great king as the arbiter in theirquarrels; they vied with each other in obtaining his good will, hissubsidies in men and vessels, and his darics: they armed or disarmed athis command, and the day seemed at hand when they would become a normaldependency of Persia, little short of a regular satrapy like AsiaticHellas. One chance of escape from such a fate remained to them--if oneor other of them, or some neighbouring state, could acquire such anascendency as to make it possible to unite what forces remained to themunder one rule. Macedonia in particular, having hitherto kept aloof fromthe general stream of politics, had at this juncture begun to shakeoff its lethargy, and had entered with energy into the Hellenic concertunder the auspices of its king, Philip. Bagoas recognised the dangerwhich threatened his people in the person of this ambitious sovereign, and did not hesitate to give substantial support to the adversaries ofthe Macedonian prince; Chersobleptes of Thrace and the town of Perinthusreceiving from him such succour as enabled them to repulse Philipsuccessfully (340). Unfortunately, while Bagoas was endeavouringto avert danger in this quarter, his rivals at court endeavoured toprejudice the mind of the king against him, and their intrigues were sosuccessful that he found himself ere long condemned to the alternativeof murdering his sovereign or perishing himself. He therefore poisonedOchus, to avoid being assassinated or put to the torture, and placed onthe throne Arses, the youngest of the king's sons, while he caused theremaining royal children to be put to death (336). * Egypt hailedthis tragic end as a mark of the vengeance of the gods whom Ochus hadoutraged. A report was spread that the eunuch was an Egyptian, that hehad taken part in the murder of the Apis under fear of death, but thatwhen he was sure of his own safety he had avenged the sacrilege. As soonas the poison had taken effect, it was said he ate a portion of the deadbody and threw the remainder to the cats: he then collected the bonesand made them into whistles and knife-handles. ** * Plutarch calls the successor of Ochus Oarses, which recalls the name which Dinon gives to Artaxerxes II. Diodorus says that Bagoas destroyed the whole family of Ochus, but he is mistaken. Arrian mentions a son of Ochus about 330, and several other members of the royal Achęmenian race are known to have been living in the time of Alexander. ** The body of the enemy thrown to the cats to be devoured is a detail added by the popular imagination, which crops up again in the Tale of Satni Khāmois. Ochus had astonished his contemporaries by the rapidity with which hehad re-established the integrity of the empire; they were pleased tocompare him with the heroes of his race, with Cyrus, Cambyses, andDarius. But to exalt him to such a level said little for their moral orintellectual perceptions, since in spite of his victories he was merelya despot of the ordinary type; his tenacity degenerated into brutalobstinacy, his severity into cruelty, and if he obtained successes, they were due rather to his generals and his ministers than to his ownability. His son Arses was at first content to be a docile instrumentin the hands of Bagoas; but when the desire for independence came to himwith the habitual exercise of power, and he began to chafe at his bonds, the eunuch sacrificed him to his own personal safety, and took his lifeas he had done that of his father in the preceding year (336). Somany murders following each other in rapid succession had considerablyreduced the Achsemenian family, and Bagoas for a moment was puzzledwhere to find a king: he at length decided in favour of Codomannos, whoaccording to some was a great-grandson of Darius II. , but according toothers was not of the royal line, but had in his youth been employed asa courier. He had distinguished himself in the hostilities against theCasduians, and had been nominated satrap of Armenia by Ochus as a rewardfor his bravery. He assumed at his accession the name of Darius; brave, generous, clement, and possessed with an ardent desire to do right, he was in every way the superior of his immediate predecessors, and hedeserved to have reigned at a time when the empire was less threatened. Bagoas soon perceived that his new protégé, whose conduct he hadreckoned on directing as he pleased, intended to govern for himself, andhe therefore attempted to get rid of him; Bagoas was, however, betrayedby his accomplices, and compelled to drink the poison which he hadprepared for Darius. These revolutions had distracted the attention ofthe court of Susa from the events which were taking place on the shoresof the Ęgean, and Philip had taken advantage of them to carry intoeffect the designs against Persia which he had been long meditating. After having been victorious against the Greeks, he had despatched anarmy of ten thousand men into Asia under the command of Parmenion andAttains (336). We may ask if it were not he who formed the project ofuniversal conquest which was so soon to be associated with the name ofhis son Alexander. He was for the moment content to excite revolt amongthe cities of the Ęgean littoral, and restore to them that liberty ofwhich they had been deprived for nearly a century. He himself followedas soon as these lost children of Greece had established themselvesfirmly in Asia. The story of his assassination on the eve of hisdeparture is well known (336), and of the difficulties which compelledAlexander to suspend the execution of the plans which his father hadmade. Darius attempted to make use of the respite thus afforded him byfortune; he adopted the usual policy of liberally bribing one part ofGreece to take up arms against Macedonia--a method which was at firstsuccessful. While Alexander was occupied in the destruction of Thebes, the Rhodian general Memnon, to whom had been entrusted the defence ofAsia Minor, forced the invaders to entrench themselves in the Troad. Ifthe Persian fleet had made its appearance in good time, and had keptan active watch over the straits, the advance-guard of the Macedonianswould have succumbed to the enemy before the main body of the troopshad succeeded in joining them in Asia, and it was easy to foretellwhat would have been the fate of an enterprise inaugurated by sucha disaster. Persia, however, had not yet learnt to seize the crucialmoment for action: her vessels were still arming when the enemy madetheir appearance on the European shore of Hellespont, and Alexander hadample time to embark and disembark the whole of his army without havingto draw his sword from the scabbard. He was accompanied by about thirtythousand foot soldiers and four thousand five hundred horse; the finesttroops commanded by the best generals of the time--Parmenion, his twosons Nikanor and Philotas, Crater, Clitos, Antigonus, and otherswhose names are familiar to us all; a larger force than Memnon and hissubordinates were able to bring up to oppose him, at all events atthe opening of the campaign, during the preliminary operations whichdetermined the success of the enterprise. The first years of the campaign seem like a review of the countriesand nations which in bygone times had played the chief part in Orientalhistory. An engagement at the fords of the Granicus, only a few daysafter the crossing of the Hellespont, placed Asia Minor at the mercyof the invader (334). Mysia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia tendered theirsubmission, Miletus and Halicarnassus being the only towns to offer anyresistance. In the spring of 333, Phrygia followed the general movement, in company with Cappadocia and Cilicia; these represented the Hittiteand Asianic world, the last representatives of which thus escaped fromthe influences of the East and passed under the Hellenic supremacy. [Illustration: 376. Jpg THE BATTLEFIELD OF ISSUS] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Lortet. At the foot of the Amanus, Alexander came into conflict not only withthe generals of Darius, but with the great king himself. The Amanus, andthe part of the Taurus which borders on the Euphrates valley, had alwaysconstituted the line of demarcation between the domain of the races ofthe Asianic peninsula and that of the Semitic peoples. [Illustration: 377. Jpg A BAS-RELIEF ON A SIDONIAN SARCOPHAGUS] A second battle near the Issus, at the entrance to the Cilician gates, cleared the ground, and gave the conqueror time to receive the homage ofthe maritime provinces. Both Northern and Coele-Syria submitted to himfrom Samosata to Damascus. [Illustration: 379. Jpg THE ISTHMUS OF TYRE AT THE PRESENT DAY] Drawn by Boudier, from a sketch by Lortet. The less important towns of Phonicia, such as Arvad, Byblos, Sidon, andthose of Cyprus, followed their example; but Tyre closed its gates, and trusted to its insular position for the preservation of itsindependence, as it had done of old in the time of Sennacherib and ofNebuchadrezzar. It was not so much a scrupulous feeling of loyalty whichemboldened her to take this step, as a keen realisation of what herconquest by the Macedonian would entail. It was entirely-owing to Persiathat she had not succumbed in all parts of the Eastern Mediterranean inthat struggle with Greece which had now lasted for centuries: Persia hadnot only arrested the progress of Hellenic colonisation in Cyprus, buthad given a fresh impulse to that of Tyre, and Phoenician influencehad regained its ascendency over a considerable part of the island. Thesurrender of Tyre, therefore, would be equivalent to a Greek victory, and would bring about the decay of the city; hence its inhabitantspreferred hostilities, and they were prolonged in desperation over aperiod of seven months. At the end of that time Alexander succeeded inreducing the place by constructing a dyke or causeway, by means ofwhich he brought his machines of war up to the foot of the ramparts, andfilled in the channel which separated the town from the mainland; theisland thus became a peninsula, and Tyre henceforth was reduced tothe rank of an ordinary town, still able to maintain her commercialactivity, but having lost her power as an independent state (332). Phoenicia being thus brought into subjection, Judęa and Samaria yieldedto the conqueror without striking a blow, though the fortress of Gazafollowed the example set by Tyre, and for the space of two monthsblocked the way to the Delta. Egypt revolted at the approach of herliberator, and the rising was so unanimous as to dismay the satrapMazakes, who capitulated at the first summons. Alexander passed thewinter on the banks of the Nile. Finding that the ancient capitals ofthe country--Thebes, Sais, and even Memphis itself--occupied positionswhich were no longer suited to the exigencies of the times, he foundedopposite to the island of Pharos, in the township of Eakotis, a cityto which he gave his own name. The rapid growth of the prosperity ofAlexandria showed how happy the founder had been in the choice of itssite: in less than half a century from the date of its foundation, ithad eclipsed all the other capitals of the Eastern Mediterranean, andhad become the centre of African Hellenism. While its constructionwas in progress, Alexander, having had opportunities of studying thepeculiarities and characteristics of the Egyptians, had decided toperform the one act which would conciliate the good feeling of thenatives, and secure for him their fidelity during his wars in the East:he selected from among their gods the one who was also revered by theGreeks, Zeus-Amnion, and repaired to the Oasis that he might be adoptedby the deity. As a son of the god, he became a legitimate Pharaoh, an Egyptian like themselves, and on returning to Memphis he no longerhesitated to adopt the _pschent_ crown with the accompanying ancientrites. He returned to Asia early in the year 331, and crossed theEuphrates. Darius had attempted to wrest Asia Minor from his grasp, butAntigonus, the governor of Phrygia, had dispersed the troops despatchedfor this purpose in 332, and Alexander was able to push forwardfearlessly into those regions beyond the Euphrates, where the TenThousand had pursued their victorious march before him. He crossed theTigris about the 20th of September, and a week later fell in withhis rival in the very heart of Assyria, not far from, the villageof Gaugamela, where he took up a position which had been previouslystudied, and was particularly suited for the evolutions of cavalry. [Illustration: 382. Jpg THE BATTLE OF ARBELA, FROM THE MOSAIC OFHERCULANUM] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph. At the Granicus and near Issus, the Greek element had played animportant part among the forces which contested the field; on thisoccasion, however, the great king was accompanied by merely two or threethousand mercenaries, while, on the other hand, the whole of Asia seemedto have roused herself for a last effort, and brought forward her mostvaliant troops to oppose the disciplined ranks of the Macedonians. Persians, Susians, Medes, Armenians, Iranians from Bactriana, Sakae, andIndians were all in readiness to do their best, and were accompaniedby every instrument of military warfare employed in Oriental tactics;chariots armed with scythes, the last descendants of the chariotry whichhad dominated all the battle-fields from the time of the XVIIIth Thebandynasty down to the latest Sargonids, and, employed side by side withthese relics of a bygone day, were Indian elephants, now for the firsttime brought into use against European battalions. These picked troopssold their lives dearly, but the perfection of the Macedonian arms, and, above all, the superiority of the tactics employed by their generals, carried the day; the evening of the 30th of September found Darius inflight, and the Achęmenian empire crushed by the furious charges ofAlexander's squadrons. Babylon fell into their hands a few days later, followed by Susa, and in the spring of 330, Ecbatana; and shortly afterDarius met his end on the way to Media, assassinated by the last of hisgenerals. With his death, Persia sank back into the obscurity from which Cyrus hadraised her rather more than two centuries previously. With the exceptionof the Medes, none of the nations which had exercised the hegemony ofthe East before her time, not even Assyria, had had at their disposalsuch a wealth of resources and had left behind them so few traces oftheir power. A dozen or so of palaces, as many tombs, a few scatteredaltars and stelę, remains of epics preserved by the Greeks, fragments ofreligious books, often remodelled, and issuing in the Avesta--whenwe have reckoned up all that remains to us of her, what do we findto compare in interest and in extent with the monuments and wealth ofwritings bequeathed to us by Egypt and Chaldęa? The Iranians receivedOriental civilisation at a time when the latter was in its decline, andcaught the spirit of decadence in their contact with it. In succeedingto the patrimony of the nations they conquered, they also inheritedtheir weakness; in a few years they had lost all the vigour of theiryouth, and were barely able to maintain the integrity of the empirethey had founded. Moreover, the great peoples to whom they succeeded, although lacking the vigour necessary for the continuance of theirindependent existence, had not yet sunk so low as to acquiesce in theirown decay, and resign themselves to allowing their national life to beabsorbed is that of another power: they believed that they would emergefrom the crisis, as they had done from so many others, with freshstrength, and, as soon as an occasion presented itself, they renewed thewar against their Iranian suzerain. Prom, the first to the latest of thesovereigns bearing the name of Darius, the history of the Achęmenids inan almost uninterrupted series of internal wars and provincial revolts. The Greeks of Ionia, the Egyptians, Chaldęans, Syrians, and the tribesof Asia Minor, all rose one after another, sometimes alone, sometimesin concert; some carrying on hostilities for not more than two orthree years; others, like Egypt, maintaining them for more than half acentury. They were not discouraged by the reprisals which followed eachof these rebellions; they again had recourse to arms as soon as thereseemed the least chance of success, and they renewed the struggle tillfrom sheer exhaustion the sword fell from their hand. Persia was wornout by this perpetual warfare, in which at the same time each of herrivals expended the last relics of their vitality, and when Macedoniaentered on the scene, both lords and vassals were reduced to such astate of prostration, that it was easy to foretell their approachingend. The old Oriental world was in its death-throes; but before itpassed away, the successful audacity of Alexander had summoned Greece tosucceed to its inheritance.