Читать книгу The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel - Thomas H. Prescott - Страница 9

The history of the extraordinary nation which once inhabited this land, must be so much more familiar to our readers than that of any other ancient nation, that all that is necessary here is a brief sketch, such as will assist the imagination in tracing with due completeness the general career of the East till the establishment of the Persian empire. According to the accounts given of the Jews in Scripture, and in their history by Josephus, they were descended from Abraham, who was born in the 292d year (according to other authorities, in the 352d year) after the Deluge, ‘left the land of Chaldea when he was seventy-five years old, and, at the command of God, went into Canaan, and therein he dwelt himself, and left it to his posterity. He was a person of great sagacity, both for understanding of all things and persuading his hearers, and not mistaken in his opinions; for which reason he began to have higher notions of virtue than others had, and he determined to renew and to change the opinion all men happened then to have concerning God; for he was the first that ventured to publish this notion, that there was but ONE God, the Creator of the universe; and that as to other gods, if they contributed anything to the happiness of men, that each of them afforded it only according to His appointment, and not by their own power. For which doctrines, when the Chaldæans and other people of Mesopotamia raised a tumult against him, he thought fit to leave that country, and at the command of God he came and lived in the land of Canaan. And when he was there settled, he built an altar, and performed a sacrifice to God.’ After the death of Abraham’s son Isaac, his younger son Jacob remained for a number of years in Canaan, surrounded by a family of twelve sons, one of whom, Joseph, as related in Scripture, became the cause of the removal of his father and brethren, and all belonging to them, into Egypt. The Hebrew emigrants were seventy in number, and formed at the first a respectable colony among the Egyptians. Jacob died after having been seventeen years in Egypt, and his body was carried by Joseph to Hebron, and buried in the sepulchre of his father and grandfather. Joseph also died in Egypt at the age of 110, and at length his brethren died likewise. Each of the twelve sons of Jacob became the progenitor of a family or tribe, and the twelve tribes, personified by the term Israel, continued to reside in Egypt, where they increased both in number and in wealth. Their rapid increase and prosperity soon excited the jealousy of the masters of the country; and from being in high favor, the different tribes gradually fell under the lash of power, and came to be treated as public slaves.

The entire body of Israelites, guided by Moses, fled from Egypt in the year 1490 before Christ, at a time when Thebes, Memphis, and the other magnificent cities of that country, were in all their glory. Proceeding in a north-easterly direction from Rameses (near the site of modern Cairo), they went through the level region of the land of Goshen (now a barren sandy plain) to the head of the Gulf of Suez, the western branch of the Red Sea. Here they crossed in a miraculous manner to the opposite shore, to a spot now called the Wells of Moses, where, according to the Scripture narrative, they sang their song of thanksgiving for their deliverance. The country in which they had now arrived was a portion of Arabia Petræa, consisting of a dismal barren wilderness, now called the Desert of Sinai, from the principal mountain which rises within it. From the point at which the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea from Egypt, they were conducted by a most circuitous and tedious route towards the Promised Land of Canaan.

The country on the shore of the Mediterranean which was allotted as a settlement to this people, was at that time occupied by many warlike tribes, who had grown strong in its fertile plains and valleys; and the generation of the Hebrews who were conducted into it were compelled to fight for its possession. The struggle was not of long continuance. The whole land was conquered in the year B. C. 1450.

According to the account given in the 26th chapter of the book of Numbers, the Hebrew nation thus brought out of the land of Egypt and settled in Canaan amounted to 601,730 souls, unto whom the land was divided for an inheritance, according to the number of individuals in the respective tribes.

Moses dying before the inheritance was entered upon, was succeeded by Joshua as a leader, and by him the Israelites were conducted across the Jordan. The political government of the various tribes, after their conquest and settlement of Canaan, appears to have been republican, with military leaders called Judges; but these acted by the direction of the Priesthood, who were immediately counseled by the Deity within the sanctuary. This period of separate government in tribes, called the Period of the Judges, lasted 300 years (B. C. 1427–1112), and was one of daring actions and great deliverances—​the heroic age of the Jews.

The epoch of kings succeeded that of judges. The reign of Saul, their first monarch, though the people were stronger by being united, was gloomy and troubled. David, who succeeded, was a soldier and a conqueror. He rendered the Hebrews formidable to the whole of their enemies, and gave them a regular and defensible position, expelling their old antagonists from every part of the country. He left an empire peaceful, respected, and strong; and, what was of as much importance, he selected from among his sons a successor who was able to improve all these advantages, and to add to the progress which his countrymen had already made in prosperity. Under Solomon, the name of the Hebrew government being able to protect its subjects in other countries, the people and their king began to employ themselves in commerce. Their trade was at first engrafted on that of the Phœnicians of Tyre. A greater contrast cannot be imagined than between the troubles of the time of the Judges (only 100 years before), and the peace, security, and enjoyment of this reign. ‘And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundance; and Judah and Israel were many; as the sand which is by the sea-shore for multitude, eating, and drinking, and making merry.’ (1 Kings, x. 27.)

After the death of Solomon, the country fell into the same divisions which had weakened it in the time of the Judges. Each of the districts of North and South Israel was under a separate king, and the people were exposed both to the attacks of their enemies and to quarrels with each other. Their history is a succession of agitating conflicts for independence, and of unexpected and remarkable deliverances, of a similar nature to those of the earlier period, and they continued for about the same length of time (380 years); but they are marked by fewer of those traits of heroic devotion which distinguished the epoch of the Judges. The backslidings, errors, and misgovernment of their kings, is the chief and painful subject which is presented to us; and though these are relieved at times by the appearance of such monarchs as Josiah, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, yet the whole history of this period is overcast with the gloominess of progressive decline.

By far the most delightful parts of it are those which relate to the lives of the prophets, who were raised up at intervals to warn the nation and its rulers of the fate which they incurred by forsaking the religion of their fathers. These inspired men sometimes sprang up from among the humblest classes of the community: one from the ‘herdsmen of Tekoa,’ another from ‘ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen;’ several were of the priestly order, and one (Isaiah) is said to have been of royal lineage; but the works of all are marked with the same sacredness, force, and authority. They reprehend their countrymen, in the most eloquent strains, at one time for idolatry, and at another for hypocrisy; and their indignation is expressed with the same freedom and dignity against the vices of the highest and the lowest.

Of the two kingdoms into which Palestine divided itself after the death of Solomon (B. C. 975), the northern, called the Kingdom of Israel, was conquered by the Assyrians of Nineveh (B. C. 722), who carried off many thousand of the people into captivity. Little is known of their fate. By some they are supposed to have been carried to India, by others to Tartary: ‘what became of all the Israelites of the ten tribes,’ is still a question with historians. The southern kingdom, called the kingdom of Judah, retained its independence till B. C. 588, when it was invaded and subdued by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who destroyed Jerusalem, and carried away a great number of the principal Jews into captivity at Babylon. On the subversion of the Babylonian dominion by Cyrus, seventy years afterwards, the captives, to the number of 42,360, were permitted to return to their own land, and rebuild Jerusalem. At this period, the whole of Palestine merged in the growing Persian empire.

The Assyrians and Babylonians. That large extent of level country situated between and on the banks of the two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, was in the earliest antiquity, the seat of a Semitic population living under an organized government. Of the cities, the most important ultimately were Babylon, built, by Nimrod, (B. C. 2217); and Nineveh (called Ninos by the Greeks), built either by Asshur or Nimrod about the same time, but afterwards rebuilt and enlarged, according to ancient tradition, by a great king, Ninus, (B. C. 1230). With these two cities as capitals, the country divided itself into two corresponding parts or kingdoms—​the kingdom of Assyria proper, including, besides part of Mesopotamia, the country to the right of the Tigris as far as Mount Zagros; and the kingdom of Babylonia, including the western part of Mesopotamia, together with the country to the left of the Euphrates as far as Syria proper. The two kingdoms, however, are often included under the joint name of Assyria; a word which, as well as the shorter form Syria, was often employed by the ancient Greek writers to designate the whole region lying along the courses of the two great rivers from the Black Sea to the northern angle of the Persian Gulf.

Although Babylon was according to Scripture, the earlier of the two powers, yet the Assyrians of Nineveh attained such strength under their hero Ninus, as to reduce the Babylonians to a species of dependence. Under Ninus, and his wife and successor the great conqueress Semiramis, says ancient mythical history, the city of the Tigris extended its dominions far and wide, from Egypt to the border of India. This empire, known in the common chronologies by the name of ‘The Assyrian Empire,’ lasted, according to the usual accounts, five or six centuries, during which it was governed, in the absolute Oriental manner, by the successors of Ninus and Semiramis. Of these several are mentioned in Scripture—​Phul, the contemporary of Menahem, king of Israel (B. C. 761), Tiglath Pileser (B. C. 730), both of whom were mixed up with the affairs of Israel and Judah; Salmanassar, cotemporary with Hezekiah, king of Judah, and Hoseah, king of Israel, by whom it was that Samaria was taken (B. C. 722), and the Israelites led into captivity (B. C. 722); and Sennacherib, or Sanherib (B. C. 714), who attacked Egypt, and whose fruitless invasion of Judah forms the subject of the striking narrative in the 18th and 19th chapters of the second book of Kings. The last of the great line of the Assyrian kings of Nineveh was the luxurious Sardanapalus, in whose reign the empire was dissolved, through the instrumentality of its revolted subjects the Medes (B. C. 626).

After Nineveh, the greatest city in the Assyrian dominion was Babylon. Even while under the dominion of the kings of Nineveh, Babylon appears to have possessed a special organization under its own chiefs, several of whose names—​such as Beldesis (B. C. 888), and Nabonassar (B. C. 747)—​have been preserved; and, together with the whole province of which it was the capital, to have pursued a special career. The peculiar element in the Babylonian society which distinguished it from that of Assyria proper, was its Chaldæan priesthood. ‘The Chaldæan order of priests,’ says Mr. Grote, ‘appear to have been peculiar to Babylon and other towns in its territory, especially between that city and the Persian Gulf; the vast, rich, and lofty temple of Belus in that city served them at once as a place of worship and an astronomical observatory; and it was the paramount ascendancy of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian people generally to be spoken of as Chaldæans, though some writers have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian Babylon by barbarians called Chaldæans from the mountains near the Euxine. There were exaggerated statements respecting the antiquity of their astronomical observations,[2] which cannot be traced, as of definite and recorded date, higher than the era of Nabonassar (B. C. 747), as well as respecting the extent of their acquired knowledge, so largely blended with astrological fancies and occult influences of the heavenly bodies on human affairs. But however incomplete their knowledge may appear when judged by the standard of after-times, there can be no doubt that, compared with any of their cotemporaries of the sixth century B. C.—​either Egyptians, Greeks, or Asiatics—​they stood preëminent, and had much to teach, not only to Thales and Pythagoras, but even to later inquirers, such as Eudoxus and Aristotle. The conception of the revolving celestial sphere, the gnomon, and the division of the day into twelve parts, are affirmed by Herodotus to have been first taught to the Greeks by the Babylonians.’ This learned Chaldæan class seems to have pervaded the general mass of Babylonian society, as the corresponding priest-caste in Egypt pervaded Egyptian society, with this difference, that Babylonian society does not appear to have been parceled out like the Egyptian into a rigorous system of castes.

On the dissolution of the Assyrian empire of Nineveh by the Medes (B. C. 626), the Chaldæan fragment of it rose to eminence on its ruins, chiefly by the efforts of Nabopolassar, a viceroy of the last Assyrian king. Establishing Babylonia as an independent power in the east, Nabopolassar came into collision with Nekos, king of Egypt, who was at that time extending his empire into Asia. It was in opposing Nekos (Pharaoh-Necho) on his march to Babylon, that Josiah, king of Judah, was slain. At length (B. C. 608) Nebuchadnezzar, or Nebuchodonosor, the son of Nabopolassar, defeated Nekos, and annexed all his conquests in Asia to his father’s kingdom. Two years afterwards the same prince took Jerusalem, and carried away a number of captives to Babylon, among whom were Daniel and his companions. Succeeding his father, B. C. 605, Nebuchadnezzar reigned over Babylon forty-three years (B. C. 605–561); and during his reign extended the empire to the Mediterranean and the borders of Egypt, adding to it Palestine, Phœnicia, etc. With his countenance the Medes and Lydians destroyed Nineveh (B. C. 601). The great abduction of Jewish captives by his orders took place B. C. 588. He was succeeded (B. C. 561) by his son, Evil-Merodach, who was dethroned (B. C. 559) by his brother-in-law Neriglissar, whose son and successor, Laboroso-archod, was dethroned, after a brief reign, by Nabonnedus, the Belshazzar of Scripture (B. C. 555); in the eighteenth year of whose reign (B. C. 538) Babylon was taken by Cyrus, and passed into the hands of the Persians.

It was during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar that the city of Babylon attained that glory which has rendered it a known word to all who are at all acquainted with history. Herodotus, who saw the city in its decline, gives a description of it which has seemed incredible to many, although now fully verified. ‘The city, divided in the middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded with walls in thickness 75 feet, in height 300 feet and in compass 480 stadia, or about 60 of our miles.’ Within this circuit there was included, besides the houses, a space of vacant ground, gardens, pasture, etc., sufficient to accommodate the country population in case of invasion: the height and strength of the walls rendered the city itself to all appearance impregnable. ‘These walls formed an exact square, each side of which was 120 stadia, or 15 miles in length; and were built of large bricks cemented together with bitumen, a glutinous slime which issues out of the earth in that country, and in a short time becomes harder than the very brick or stone which it cements. The city was encompassed without the walls of a vast ditch filled with water, and lined with bricks on both sides; and as the earth that was dug out of it served to make the bricks, we may judge of the depth and largeness of the ditch from the height and thickness of the walls. In the whole compass of the walls there were a hundred gates—​that is, twenty-five on each side, all made of solid brass. At intervals round the walls were 250 towers. From each of the twenty-five gates there was a straight street extending to the corresponding gate, in the opposite wall; the whole number of streets was therefore fifty, crossing each other at right angles, and each fifteen miles long. The breadth of the streets was about 150 feet. By their intersection the city was divided into 676 squares, each about two miles and a quarter in compass, round which were the houses, three or four stories in height; the vacant spaces within being laid out in gardens,’ etc. Within the city the two greatest edifices were the royal palace with its hanging gardens, and the temple of Belus, composed of eight towers built one above another, to the enormous height, it is said, of a furlong.

Without the city were numerous canals, embankments, etc., for the purpose of irrigating the country, which, as little or no rain fell, depended on the river for moisture. ‘The execution of such colossal works as those of Babylon and Egypt,’ it has been remarked, ‘demonstrates habits of regular industry, a concentrated population under one government, and above all, an implicit submission to the regal and kingly sway—​contrasted forcibly with the small self-governing communities of Greece and western Europe, where the will of the individual citizen was so much more energetic.’ In the latter countries only such public works were attempted as were within the limits of moderate taste. Nineveh is said to have been larger even than Babylon, and is described as an oblong, three days’ journey round—​that is, upwards of 60 miles.

The Medes and Persians. Extending, as we have said, from the Mediterranean to the Indus, the Assyrian empire had included not only the chief Semitic nations of western Asia, but also that portion of the Indo-Germanic family which was contained between Mount Zagros and the river Indus. Essentially a prolongation of the great race which inhabited Hindoostan, the nature of their country—​a vast table-land, here and there rising into hills, or presenting spots of great fertility—​had made them quite different in character and habits from the settled and stereotyped Hindoos. All parts of this plateau of Iran, as it was called, including the present countries of Persia, Cabool, and Belochistan, were not alike; in some portions, where the soil was fertile, there existed a dense agricultural population; in others, the inhabitants were nomadic horse-breeders, cattle-rearers, and shepherds. All the tribes, however, were bound together by the ties of a common Indo-Persic language, quite distinct from that spoken by their Semitic neighbors and masters, and by a common religion. This religion, called the Religion of Zend, a modification probably of some more ancient form, from which Hindooism may also have sprung, was taught by Zerdusht or Zoroaster, a great native reformer and spiritual teacher, who lived six or seven centuries before Christ. The principal doctrine of his religion was that of the existence of two great emanations from the Supreme and perfect Deity—​the one a good spirit (Ormuzd), who created man, and fitted him for happiness; the other an evil spirit, named Ahriman, who has marred the beauty of creation by introducing evil into it. Between these two spirits and their adherents there is an incessant struggle for the mastery; but ultimately Ormuzd will conquer, and Ahriman and evil will be banished from the bosom of creation into eternal darkness. The worship annexed to this doctrine was very simple, dispensing with temples or images, and consisting merely of certain solemn rites performed on mountain tops, etc. Fire, and light, and the sun, were worshiped either as symbols or as inferior deities. A caste of priests, called the Magi, answering in some respects to the Brahmins of India or the Chaldæans of Babylon, superintended these ceremonies, and commented on the religion of Zoroaster.

Various of the tribes of Iran, associating themselves together, constituted little nations. Thus adjacent to Assyria, and separated from it by Mount Zagros, was an agglomeration of seven tribes or villages, under the special name of the Medes, the country which they inhabited being thence called Media. South from Media, and nearer the sea, was another district of Iran, called Persis or Persia, inhabited also by an association of tribes calling themselves the Persians. Other nations of Iran were the Parthians, the Bactrians, etc.—​all originally subject to the Assyrian empire.

Median history begins with a hero king called Deiokes (B. C. 710–657), who effected some important changes in the constitution of the nation, and founded the Median capital Ekbatana in one of the most pleasant sites in the world. His son, Phraortes (B. C. 657–635), pursued a career of conquest, subjugated Persia and other districts of Iran, and perished in an invasion of Assyria. He was succeeded by his son Cyaxares, who continued his designs of conquest, and extended the Median dominion as far westward into Asia Minor as the river Halys. He was engaged in a repetition of his father’s attempt against Nineveh, when he was called away to defend his kingdom against a great roving population, belonging, as is most likely, to the Scythian branch of the Caucasian race (although some reckon them Mongols), who, bursting with their herds of horses and mares from their native seat in Central Asia, had driven the Cimmerians, a kindred race, before them into Asia Minor, and then had poured themselves over the plateau of Iran. Defeating Cyaxares, they kept him from his throne for a period of twenty-eight years, during which they ruled in savage fashion over Media, Persia, etc. At length, having assassinated their chiefs by a stratagem, Cyaxares regained his dominions, and drove the invaders back into the north. He then renewed his attempt against Nineveh; took it; and reduced the Assyrian empire, with the exception of Babylonia, under his dominion. The Median empire, thus formed, he bequeathed (B. C. 595) to his son Astyages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HISTORY OF GREECE—​EARLY MYTHOLOGY.

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

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

Jupiter divided his dominions with his brothers Neptune and Pluto.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theseus succeeded his father on the Athenian throne (1234 B. C.), and by his wise regulations greatly consolidated the strength and increased the prosperity of his kingdom. Cecrops, the founder of Athens, had divided Attica into twelve districts, each of which possessed its own magistracy and judicial tribunals. As the country advanced in wealth and population, these districts became less closely connected with each other, and at the period of the accession of Theseus, they could hardly be regarded in any other light than as so many little independent communities, whose perpetual disputes kept the whole district in broils and confusion. But Theseus had influence enough with all parties to obtain their consent to the abolition of the separate jurisdictions, and to the fixing of all civil and judicial authority in the capital. He at the same time voluntarily resigned into their hands a portion of his own power. Having divided the people into three classes—​the nobles, the artisans, and the cultivators of the soil—​he intrusted the first of these with the administration of public affairs, and the dispensation of justice, while he conferred upon every freeman or citizen, without distinction of class, a vote in the legislative assemblies. The command of the army, and the presidency of the state, he retained in his own person.

To strengthen the political union of the various districts of his kingdom by the tie of a common religion, he instituted a solemn festival, to be celebrated annually at Athens by all the inhabitants of Attica, in honor of Minerva, the tutelary deity of the city. This festival he denominated Panathenæ, or the Feast of all the Athenians, the name by which the whole of the people of Attica were thenceforth called.

The wise and liberal policy of Theseus caused Attica to advance considerably beyond the other states of Greece in prosperity and civilization; and the ancient historian, Thucydides, informs us that the Athenians were the first of the Greeks who laid aside the military dress and arms, which till now had been constantly worn. The example of Athens was not lost on the other Grecian communities, all of which gradually adopted, to a greater or less extent, those political institutions which had conferred so many advantages upon Attica.

Notwithstanding the judicious and exemplary conduct of Theseus in the early part of the reign, he appears to have afterwards allowed his restless and adventurous disposition to hurry him into many extravagances, and even crimes, by which he forfeited the respect of his people, and brought disgrace and suffering on his latter years. If we may believe the traditionary accounts, he accompanied Hercules in some of his celebrated expeditions, and assisted by Pirithoüs, a king of Thessaly, engaged in many martial and predatory adventures, conformably rather with the very imperfect morality and rude manners of the age, than with his own previous character. There reigned in Lacedæmon at this period a king named Tyndarus, who had a beautiful daughter called Helen, and according to the ancient historians, Theseus and his friend Pirithous formed the design of stealing away this young lady, and a princess of Epirus named Proserpine. They succeeded in carrying off Helen; but in their attempt to obtain Proserpine, they fell into the hands of her father, by whom Pirithoüs was put to death, and Theseus thrown into prison. Meanwhile, Castor and Pollux, the twin-brothers of Helen, who were afterwards deified, and whose names have been bestowed upon one of the signs of the Zodiac (Gemini), rescued their sister from the men to whom Theseus had given her in charge, and ravaged Attica in revenge for the injury they had received from its king.

Theseus was afterwards released from imprisonment by the assistance of Hercules, and returned home; but the Athenians had become so offended with his conduct, and were so angry at his having exposed them to ill treatment from the Lacedæmonians by his wicked attempt upon Helen, that they refused to receive him again as their sovereign. He therefore withdrew into exile, and soon after died in the island of Scyros. The Athenian people, however, never forgot the benefits he had in his wiser days conferred upon the state; and many centuries after his death, his bones, or some which were supposed to be his, were conveyed to Athens with great pomp, and a splendid temple was erected above them to his memory.

The Lacedæmonian princess who was stolen away by Theseus afterwards became the occasion of a celebrated war. The fame of her great beauty having spread far and wide, many of the princes of Greece asked her from her father Tyndarus in marriage; but he, being fearful of incurring the enmity of the rejected suitors, declined showing a preference for any of them. Assembling them all, he bound them by an oath to acquiesce in the selection which Helen herself should make, and to protect her against any attempts which might afterwards be made to carry her off from the husband of her choice. Helen gave the preference to Menelaus, a grandson of Pelops, and this successful suitor, on the death of Tyndarus, was raised to the Spartan throne.

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At this period, in the north-western part of Asia Minor, on the shores of the Hellespont and the Ægean Seas, there existed a kingdom, the capital of which was a large and well-fortified city named Troy, or Ilium. Priam the king of Troy, had a son whose name was Paris; and this young chief, in the course of a visit to Greece, resided for a time in Sparta at the court of Menelaus, who gave the Asiatic stranger a very friendly reception. Charmed with Helen’s beauty, Paris employed the opportunity afforded by a temporary absence of her husband to gain her affections, and persuade her to elope with him to Troy. It was not, according to the old poets, to his personal attractions, great as they were, that Paris owed his success on this occasion, but to the aid of the goddess of Love, whose favor he had won by assigning to her the palm of beauty, on an occasion when it was contested between her and two other female deities.

When Menelaus returned home, he was naturally wroth at finding his hospitality so ill requited; and after having in vain endeavored, both by remonstrances and threats, to induce the Trojans to send him back his queen, he applied to the princes who had formerly been Helen’s lovers, and called upon them to aid him according to their oaths, in recovering her from her seducer. They obeyed the summons; and all Greece being indignant at the insult offered to Menelaus, a general muster of the forces of the various states took place at Aulis, a seaport town of Bœotia preparatory to their crossing the Ægean to the Trojan shore. This is supposed to have happened in the year 1194 B. C.

Of the chiefs assembled on this occasion, the most celebrated were Agamemnon, king of Mycene; Menelaus, king of Sparta; Ulysses, king of Ithaca; Nestor, king of Pylos; Achilles, son of the king of Thessaly; Ajax, of Salamis; Diomedes, of Ætolia; and Idomeneus, of Crete.

Agamemnon, the brother of the injured Menelaus, was elected commander-in-chief of the confederated Greeks. According to some ancient authors, this general was barbarous enough to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, to induce the gods to send a favoring gale to the Grecian fleet when it was detained by contrary winds in the port of Aulis; but as the earliest writers respecting the Trojan war make no mention of this unnatural act, it is to be hoped that it never was performed.

The Grecian armament consisted of about 1200 vessels, with from 50 to 120 men in each, and the army which warred against Troy is supposed to have amounted altogether to about 100,000 men. The Trojans, although reinforced by auxiliary bands from Assyria, Thrace, and Asia Minor, were unable to withstand the Greeks in the open country, and they therefore soon retired within the walls of their city.

In those early times men were unskilled in the art of reducing fortified places, and the Greeks knew of no speedier way of taking Troy than blockading it till the inhabitants should be compelled by famine to surrender. But here a new difficulty arose. No arrangements had been made for supplying the invaders with provisions during a lengthened seige; and after they had plundered and laid waste the surrounding country, they began to be in as great danger of starvation as the besieged. The supplies which arrived from Greece were scanty and irregular, and it became necessary to detach a part of the beleaguering forces to cultivate the plains of the Chersonesus of Thrace, in order to raise crops for the support of themselves and their brethren in arms.

The Grecian army being thus weakened, the Trojans were encouraged to make frequent sallies, in which they were led generally by the valiant Hector, Priam’s eldest and noblest son. Many skirmishes took place, and innumerable deeds of individual heroism were performed, all of which led to no important result, for the opposing armies were so equally matched, that neither could obtain any decisive advantage over the other. At length, after a siege of no less than ten years, in the course of which some of the most distinguished leaders on both sides were slain, Troy was taken, its inhabitants slaughtered, and its edifices burnt and razed to the ground.

According to the poets, it was by a stratagem that this famous city was at last overcome. They tell us that the Greeks constructed a wooden horse of prodigious size, in the body of which they concealed a number of armed men, and then retired towards the sea-shore, to induce the enemy to believe that the besiegers had given up the enterprise, and were about to return home. Deceived by this manœuvre, the Trojans brought the gigantic horse into the city, and the men who had been concealed within it, stealing out in the night-time, unbarred the gates, and admitted the Grecian army within the walls. The siege of Troy forms the subject of Homer’s sublime poem, the ‘Iliad,’ in which the real events of the war are intermingled with many fictitious and supernatural incidents.

* * * * *

The Greek princes discovered that their triumph over Troy was dearly paid for by their subsequent sufferings, and the disorganization of their kingdoms at home. Ulysses, if we may believe the poets, spent ten years in wandering over seas and lands before arriving in his island of Ithaca. Others of the leaders died or were shipwrecked on their way home, and several of those who succeeded in reaching their own dominions, found their thrones occupied by usurpers, and were compelled to return to their vessels, and seek in distant lands a place of rest and security for their declining years. But the fate of Agamemnon, the renowned general of the Greeks, was the most deplorable of all. On his return to Argos, he was assassinated by his wife Clytemnestra, who had formed an attachment during his absence to another person. Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, was driven into exile, but afterwards returned to Argos, and putting his mother and her accomplices to death, established himself upon the throne. About eighty years after the termination of the Trojan war, an extensive revolution took place in the affairs of Greece, in consequence of the subjugation of nearly the whole Peloponnesus by the descendants of Hercules. That hero, who was a member of the royal family of Mycenæ or Argos, had been driven into exile by some more successful candidate for the throne of that state. After the hero’s death, his children sought refuse in Doris, the king of which became subsequently so much attached to Hyllus, the eldest son of Hercules, that he constituted him the heir of his throne. Twice the Heraclidæan princes unsuccessfully attempted to establish themselves in the sovereignty of the Peloponnesus, which they claimed as their right; but on the third trial, they accomplished their object. In the year 1104 B. C., three brothers named Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus, said to have been the great-grandsons of Hyllus, invaded the Peloponnesus at the head of the Dorians, and conquered the greater part of it, with the exception of the province of Arcadia, the mountainous character of which enabled its inhabitants to defend it with success against the invaders.

Temenus obtained the kingdom of Argos, Cresphontes established himself in Messenia, and as Aristodemus had died during the war, his twin sons Eurysthenes and Procles shared between them the throne of Sparta. The thrones of Corinth and Elis were occupied by other branches of the Heraclidæan family. The Dorian troops were rewarded with the lands of the conquered inhabitants, who were driven out of the Peloponnesus, or reduced to slavery. Great numbers of the Peloponnesians, who were expatriated by the Dorian invaders, passed over into Asia Minor, where they founded several colonies in a district afterwards called Æolia, from the name of the people by whom these colonies were established. Others took refuge in Attica, where the Athenians received them in a friendly manner. This, it would appear, gave offence to the new rulers of the Peloponnesian states, and war was commenced between the Dorians and the Athenians. In the year 1070 B. C., Attica was invaded by a numerous army of the Peloponnesians, and Athens itself seemed menaced with destruction. This emergency produced a display of patriotic devotion on the part of Codrus, the Athenian king, which has rarely been paralleled in the annals of mankind, and deserves to be held in everlasting remembrance:—

At Delphi in Phocis there was a temple of Apollo, to the priests of which the Greeks were wont to apply for information regarding future events, in the same manner as the people of comparatively recent times were accustomed to consult astrologers, soothsayers, and other artful imposters on similar questions. Now Codrus had learned that the Peloponnesians had received at Delphi a prophetical response, to the effect that they should not be victorious in the war, if they did not kill the Athenian king. Determined to save his country at the expense of his own life, Codrus disguised himself in a peasant’s dress, and entering the Peloponnesian camp, provoked a quarrel with a soldier, by whom he was killed.

It was not long until the dead body was recognized to be that of the Athenian king, and the Peloponnesians, remembering the condition on which the oracle had promised them success, were afraid to continue the contest any longer, and hastily retreated into their own territories. The Athenians were filled with admiration when they heard of the noble conduct of their monarch, and in the height of their gratitude, they declared that none but Jupiter was worthy of being their king after such a prince as Codrus.

It is supposed that they were partly induced to make this declaration by finding the sons of Codrus evince an inclination to involve the country in a civil war regarding the succession to the throne. The Athenians therefore abolished royalty altogether, and appointed Medon, Codrus’s eldest son, under the title of Archon, as chief magistrate of the republic for life; the office to be hereditary in his family as long as its duties should be performed to the satisfaction of the people. And as Attica was overcrowded with the Peloponnesian refugees, these, together with a large body of Athenians, were sent into Asia Minor, under the charge of Androclus and Neleus, the younger sons of Codrus, to plant colonies to the south of those already formed in Æolia. The settlers founded twelve cities, some of which afterwards rose to great wealth and splendor. Ionia was the name bestowed upon the district, in reference to the Ionic stock from which the Athenians drew their descent.

Several Dorian colonies in Caria, a province still farther south than Ionia, completed the range of Grecian settlements along the western coast of Asia Minor. Cyprus, Rhodes, the coast of Thrace, and the islands of the Ægean Sea, together with a considerable portion of Italy and Sicily, and even of France and Spain, were also colonized by bands of adventurers, who at various periods emigrated from Greece; so that, in process of time, the Grecian race, language, religion, institutions, and manners, instead of being confined to the comparatively small country constituting Greece proper, were diffused over a very extensive region, comprising the fairest portions of Europe and of western Asia.

While this work of colonization was going forward, the parent states of Greece were torn with internal dissensions, and were perpetually harassing each other in wars, of which the objects and incidents are now equally uncertain. Almost all that is known of the history of the two centuries immediately following the death of Codrus is, that they were characterized by great turbulence and confusion, and that, during their lapse, many of the Grecian states and colonies followed the example of Athens by abolishing monarchy. Others did not, till a later period, become republican, and Sparta long retained the singular form of regal government established there at the accession of the twin brothers Eurysthenes and Procles, the descendants of whom continued for several centuries to reign jointly in Lacedæmon, though, practically speaking, no state of Greece was more thoroughly republican in many important respects.

Greece had been all along divided into a number of independent states, and after the abolition of kingly government, several of these were split up into as many distinct republics as the state contained of towns. These divisions of the country, and the obstacles which the almost incessant wars interposed to a free communication between the inhabitants of the different districts, necessarily prevented the advancement of the Greeks in knowledge and civilization; but fortunately, a king of Elis, named Iphitus, at length devised an institution by which the people of all the Grecian states were enabled, notwithstanding their quarrels and wars with one another, to meet periodically on friendly terms, and communicate to each other such information as might be useful for the improvement and welfare of the whole.

This institution was the Olympic Festival. From a very remote period, the Greeks had been accustomed to engage in contests of strength and agility during their times of festivity, and also at the funerals of distinguished personages. Iphitus conceived the idea of establishing a periodical festival in his own dominions for the celebration of these ancient games, and of religious rites in honor of Jupiter and Hercules; and having obtained the authority of the Delphian oracle for carrying his design into execution, he instituted the festival, and appointed that it should be repeated every fourth year at Olympia, a town of Elis.

To this festival he invited all the people of Greece; and that none might be prevented from attending it by the wars in which any of the states might be engaged, the Delphic oracle commanded that a general armistice should take place for some time before and after each celebration. The date of the establishment of the Olympic games (884 B. C.) was afterwards assumed by the Greeks as the epoch from which they reckoned the progress of time; the four years intervening between each recurrence of the festival being styled an Olympiad.

Three other institutions of a similar nature were afterwards established: namely, the Isthmian Games, celebrated near Corinth; the Pythian, at Delphi; and the Neméan, in Argolis. These took place on the various years which intervened between the successive festivals at Olympia; but although they acquired considerable celebrity, none of them rose to the importance and splendor of that of Iphitus. The games which were celebrated at the festivals consisted of foot and chariot races, wrestling and boxing matches, and other contests requiring strength and agility, together with competitions in poetry and music. The victors were crowned with an olive wreath; an honor which it was esteemed by the Greeks one of the highest objects of ambition to attain.

SECOND OR AUTHENTIC PERIOD OF HISTORY.

The second and authentic period of Greek history commences in the year 884 B. C., at the institution of the Olympic Festival, when the people had begun to emerge from their primitive barbarism. This festival, as already stated, was instituted by direction of the Delphic oracle, by Iphitus, Prince of Elis, for the patriotic purpose of assembling together, in a peaceful manner, persons from all parts of Greece. The festival was ordained to take place once every four years, in the month corresponding to our July, and to last five days, during which there was to be complete truce, or cessation from war, throughout the Grecian states. Agreeably to the ancient practice at public solemnities, the festival was celebrated by games and various feats of personal skill, and the whole order of procedure was regulated with extraordinary care. All freemen of Grecian extraction were invited to contend, provided they had been born in lawful wedlock, and had lived untainted by any infamous moral stain. No women (the priestesses of Ceres excepted) were permitted to be present. Females who violated this law were thrown from a rock. The competitors prepared themselves during ten months previous at the gymnasium at Elis. During the last thirty days, the exercises were performed with as much regularity as at the games themselves. The festival began in the evening with solemn sacrifices, and the games were commenced the next day at daybreak.

These consisted in races on horseback and on foot, in leaping, throwing the discus or quoit, wrestling, and boxing; musical and poetical contests concluded the whole. The honor of having gained a victory in the Olympic Games was very great; it extended from the victor to his country, which was proud of owning him. However rude and boisterous were some of the sports of the Olympic Festival, it is acknowledged by the best authorities that they were attended with manifold advantages to society. It is sufficient barely to mention the suspension of hostilities, which took place not only during the festival, but a considerable time both before and after it. Considered as a kind of religious ceremony, at which the whole Grecian citizens were invited, and even enjoined, to assist, it was well adapted to facilitate intercourse, to promote knowledge, to soften prejudice, and to hasten the progress of civilization and humanity.

At the first institution of the Olympic Festival, and for one or two centuries afterwards, the condition of Grecian society was primitive, and almost patriarchal, but marked by strong features of heroic dignity, and a certain depth and refinement of thought. The attire of the men was very simple, consisting only of a shirt or close jacket to the body, with a loose robe hanging down over the naked limbs, while performers in the public games were almost naked. The arts, including agriculture, were also little advanced; few persons seemed to have thought of toiling to accumulate wealth; and each community presented, in time of peace, the picture of a large family. That portion of the people constituting the freemen lived much in public, or in the society of their equals, enjoyed common pleasures and amusements, and had daily opportunities of displaying their useful talents in the sight of their fellow-citizens. The frequent disputes between individuals occasioned litigations and trials, which furnished employment for the eloquence and ability of men in the necessary defence of their friends. The numerous games and public solemnities opened a continual source of entertainment, and habituated every man to active physical exercise, and the performance of his duties as a soldier. These were agreeable features in the condition of Grecian society; but there were also some of an opposite character. The people were of an unsettled disposition, never satisfied long with any kind of government which existed amongst them, and very much disposed to wage war against neighboring states on the most trifling pretenses.

The population of the various states was divided into three classes—​namely, the citizens, the enfranchised populace, and the slaves. All political power, even in the most democratical of the Grecian communities, was possessed by the first of these classes, while in the oligarchical states, only that small portion of the citizens which constituted the nobility or aristocracy possessed any influence in the management of public affairs. The mechanical and agricultural labors necessary for the support and comfort of the whole, were chiefly performed by the inferior class of free inhabitants, who did not enjoy the privilege of citizenship, and by the slaves, who formed a considerable portion of the population of every state. These slaves were sprung from the same general or parent stock, spoke the same language, and professed the same religion, as their masters. They were in most cases the descendants of persons who had been conquered in war, but were in some instances acquired by purchase. Society being thus based on vicious principles, it is not wonderful that the Grecian states were the scene of constant civil broils.

Sparta—​Lycurgus. At the beginning of this period of Grecian history, our attention is powerfully attracted by a very remarkable series of proceedings which took place in Lacedæmon, or Laconia, a country of southern Greece, of which the chief city was Sparta. This city being in a state of intestine disorder, it was agreed by many of the inhabitants to invite Lycurgus, the son of one of their late kings, to undertake the important task of preparing a new constitution for his country. Fortified with the sanction of the Delphic oracle, he commenced this difficult duty, not only settling the form of government, but reforming the social institutions and manners of the people. The government he established consisted of two joint kings, with a limited prerogative, and who acted as presidents of a senate of twenty-eight aged men. The functions of the senate were deliberative as well as executive, but no law could be passed without receiving the consent of the assembled citizens. The most remarkable of the arrangements of Lycurgus was his attempt to abolish difference of rank, and even difference of circumstances, among the people. He resolved on the bold measure of an equal division of lands, and actually parceled out the Laconian territory into 39,000 lots, one of which was given to each citizen of Sparta, or free inhabitant of Laconia. Each of these lots was of such a size as barely sufficed to supply the wants of a single family—​for Lycurgus was determined that no person should be placed in such circumstances as would permit of luxurious living.

Lycurgus carried into effect a number of other visionary projects: he abolished the use of money, with the hope of preventing undue accumulation of wealth; prohibited foreigners from entering the country, and the natives from going abroad, in order to preserve simplicity of manners among the people; directed that all men, without distinction of rank or age, should eat daily together at public tables, which were furnished with the plainest food; and finally, ordained that all the children who were born, and seemed likely to be strong, should be reared by public nurses, under a rigid system of privation and personal activity, while the weak infants should be thrown out to the fields to perish. The citizens, when they had attained the age of manhood, were engaged in martial exercises, all labor being left to the slaves, or helots, as they were termed; and in short, the whole nation was but a camp of soldiers, and war was reckoned the only legitimate profession. These laws were in some measure suited to the rude condition of the Spartans, but, as being opposed to some of the best and strongest principles in human nature, they could not possibly endure, and there is reason to believe that some of them were not strictly enforced. It is not unusual to see historians use the term Spartan virtue with a certain degree of admiration of its quality; but the Spartans had, in reality, no moral dignity, certainly no benevolence, in their virtue, either public or private. They were a small confederacy of well-trained soldiers; and merely as such, deserve no mark of our respect or esteem. The manner in which they used their helots was at once barbarous and cruel. The murder of a serf by a free citizen was not punishable by law; nay, it was even allowable for the young Spartans to lie in wait, as a kind of sport, for any good-looking or saucy-looking slave, and stab him to the heart on the highway. It is certain that at one time, when the helots had stood their masters in good stead in battle, they were desired, by way of reward, to choose out 2000 of their best men, that they might receive their freedom, and be enrolled as Spartans, and that these 2000 men were all silently murdered soon after. At another time, when danger was apprehended from the growing numbers and petty wealth of the boors, the senate enacted the farce of declaring war against them, and coolly murdered many thousands, in order to thin their numbers and break their spirit. Had there been any redeeming trait in the Spartan character to compensate for such barbarity, one would have wondered less at the respect which is sometimes paid them; but their military fame only adds another instance to the many already on record, that the most ignorant and savage tribes make the most dogged soldiers.